Abstract
Understanding the reactive behaviour of high explosive (HE) crystals at thermo-mechanical conditions generated by shock-waves is an important step toward understanding shock-wave initiation of these crystals. Despite the significant differences in time scales and loading rates, static high pressure and high temperature (HP-HT) experiments can provide key results regarding structural and chemical processes in HE crystals at pressures and temperatures relevant to shock initiation. Here, we present selected examples for utilizing optical spectroscopy to understand molecular processes in HE crystals at static HP-HT conditions to gain insight into their shock initiation mechanisms. The relevant results obtained from static studies up to 15 GPa and 700 K on polymorphism and decomposition are presented for cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX) and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). This work demonstrates that the static HP-HT results in conjunction with shock-wave experiments provide an important approach to elucidate processes related to the initiation of shocked HE crystals, including polymorphic transitions, conformational changes, identification of crystal phases at decomposition, and mechanisms governing shock induced decomposition.
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