Characterization of the Detonation Pressure of a PETN Based PBX with the Optical Active Method

Detonation metrology is essential for the development of energetic materials, to characterize existing explosives, and to characterize materials behavior under high pressures. The optical active method (OAM), based on PMMA optical fibers (250 mm diameter) and their radiation transmission loss when shocked, was used to characterize the detonation wave (DW) and shock wave (SW) in inert barriers and applied to measure the detonation pressure in condensed explosives. The detonation velocity and detonation pressure of a PBX based on PETN (86 % PETN, 14 % Sylgard), known as Seismoplast were measured. The OAM with protected optical probes (POP) was used to determine the mean detonation velocity (7337 m s−1), whereas the OAM with bare optical probes (BOP) was used to measure the induced shock velocities generated by Seismoplast on different thicknesses of PMMA (1-9 mm), aluminum and copper (1-7 mm). Based on the shock velocities at the interfaces between the explosive and the inert barriers, the CJ pressure of Seismoplast was determined as 21.2 GPa.