Experimental study and numerical simulation of the corner turning of TATB based and CL-20 based polymer bonded explosives

Abstract

In order to study the corner turning performance of detonation waves for TATB (1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene) based and CL-20 (2,4,6,8,10,12-hexanitro-2,4,6,8,10,12- hexaazaisowurtzitane) based polymer bonded explosives (PBXs with PBX-I, PBX-II, and PBX-III modifications), mushroom tests are used to obtain the first breakout angles, failure angles, and delay times with initiating diameters of 10 and 15 mm. The results show that these parameters of PBX-I increase with an increase in the initiating diameter. The first breakout angles and failure angles of PBX-II and PBX-III are 90◦ for the initiating diameter of 10 mm, while these angles for PBX-I are 22.7 and 31.9◦ for the same initiating diameter, which implies that CL-20 based explosives have excellent corner turning performance, even with 13.5 wt.% aluminum powders added to PBX-III. Then, two-dimensional numerical simulations of PBX-I are performed by using the Lee–Tarver ignition and growth model. The computed results agree well with the measured results for all cases studied.