Measurements of Detonation Pressure

The ``aquarium technique'' is applied in the experimental determination of the equation of state for water and Lucite. Results for water are compared with similar results obtained by other methods. Measurements of the peak pressures in the detonation waves are presented for explosives of various types and rates of reaction. The peak pressures were found to be the Chapman-Jouguet or ``detonation'' pressures of the thermohydrodynamic theory. There was no evidence whatever for the ``spike'' of the Zeldovich-von Neumann model even though conditions were such that this spike would have been detected by the method employed if it were actually present, at least in the large diameter, nonideal explosives of maximum reaction zone length.