Estimation of Explosive Energy Output by EXPLO5 Thermochemical Code

Abstract

Detonation velocity, detonation pressure, and detonation heat are usually used as a measure of explosive's performance. However, they do not answer the question how fast an explosive can accelerate the surrounding metal liner. A semi‐empirical solution to this problem was proposed by R. W. Gurney in 1943. In this paper we used thermochemical calculations to calculate energy of detonation products along the expansion isentrope and to estimate the Gurney energy and cylinder wall velocity from it. It was found that for the same degree of the products expansion, experimentally determined Gurney energy is systematically less than calculated detonation energy due to the energy losses. At about threefold expansion of the products, the detonation energy matches very well with an experimental Gurney energy.