Weight-Based Evaluation of the Explosive Power of New Energetic Materials

Abstract

Accurately evaluating the explosive performance of newly developed energetic materials is important for the design of high-energy warheads. Different energetic materials have distinct effects in terms of thermal damage and damage caused by the pressure of the shock wave. In this study, the authors seek to quantitatively evaluate the explosive power of new energetic materials on the basis of the above factors. We consider single-parameter models for the evaluation of both the pressure of the shock wave and the thermal dose and use them to propose a comprehensive method to assess the explosive effects of new energetic materials based on their weight distribution. We first build a test system to obtain the thermal dose corresponding to the typical proportional distance based on the typical peak pressure. We then construct a normalized model of the surface-reflected pressure and the thermal dose by using the proportional distance related to a typical shock wave. Finally, we calculate the specific equivalent of new energetic materials relative to trinitrotoluene (TNT) and use it to quantitatively evaluate its explosive power. The results of experiments to assess the performance of the proposed method show that it is applicable and can be used to assess the explosive effects of new energetic materials.