Investigating short-pulse shock initiation in HMX-based explosives with reactive meso-scale simulations

We performed reactive meso-scale simulations of short-pulse experiments to study the influence of flyer velocity and pore structure on shock initiation of LX-10 (95wt% HMX, 5wt% Viton A). Our calculations show that the reaction evolution fit a power law relationship in time and increases with increasing porosity, decreasing pore size, and increasing flyer velocity. While heterogeneous shock initiation modes, dependent on hot spot mechanisms, are predicted at lower flyer velocities, mixed heterogeneous-homogeneous shock initiation modes, less dependent on hot spots, are predicted at higher velocities. These studies are important because they enable the development of predictive shock initiation models that incorporate complex microstructure and can be used to optimize performance-safety characteristics of explosives.