Heat Transfer Analysis and Assessment of Kinetics Systems for PBX 9501

Abstract

The study of thermal decomposition in high explosive (HE) charges has been an ongoing process since the early 1900s. This work is specifically directed towards the analysis of PBX 9501. In the early 1970s, Dwight Jaeger of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) developed a single-step, two-species kinetics system that was used in the development of one of the first finite element codes for thermal analyses known as EXPLO. Jaeger's research focused on unconfined spherical samples of HE charges to determine if varied heating ramps would cause detonation or deflagration. Tarver and McGuire of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) followed soon after with a three-step, four-species kinetics system that was developed for confined spheres under relatively fast heating conditions. Peter Dickson et al. of LANL then introduced a kinetics system with four steps and five species that included bimolecular products to capture the effects of the endothermic phase change that the HE undergoes. The results of four experiments are examined to study the effectiveness of these kinetics systems. The experiments are: (1) The LLNL scaled thermal explosion (STEX) experiments on confined cylindrical charges with long heating ramps in the range of 90 hours. (2) The LLNL one-dimensional time to explosion (ODTX) experiments on spherical charges that include confined, partially confined, and aged HE experiments. (3) The LANL unconfined one-dimensional experiments for small spheres. (4) The Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake experiments on small confined cylinders. The three kinetics systems are applied to each of the four experiments with the use of the finite element analysis (FEA) heat conduction solver COYOTE. The numerical results using the kinetics systems are compared to each other and to the experimental data to determine which kinetics systems are best suited for analyzing conditions such as time to ignition, containment, heating time, and location of ignition.