skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Shock-Induced Solid-State Reactions in Powders: An Experimentally-Based Reassessment

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1599975· OSTI ID:1599975

We have performed a series of ten planar impact experiments on six different materials, including certain reactive powders and two inert materials, using Sandia's 89 - mm powder gun at the STAR facility. Time - resolved particle - velocity histories were determined during each of the experiments from one or more VISAR measurements. We have analyzed the results of these measurements 1) by using jump conditions to determine shock and first reshock states and 2) by comparing measured particle velocity histories to synthetic histories predicted by one - dimensional computational analyses using the CTH shock physics code with various models for inert and reactive materials . These comparisons are consistent with the conclusion for these particular reactive powders, that for the duration of shock loading either 1) there is insignificant reaction or 2) the products of any reaction are indistinguishable from the reactants under the experimental conditions. Shock and reshock states were extracted for shock pressures between 5 and 40 GPa. Densities were at or greater than the theoretical maximum zero - pressure density of the starting mixture. This result would be expected if there were no reaction or negligible reaction for the first two shock states. Two experiments were performed on one reactive powder in a "ring - down " geometry to look for evidence of vapor production on pressure release. In both cases, the measured velocity continued to increase slowly over a period of microseconds for the du ration of the experiment. This observation suggests that vapor is produced along the release path, but information about the mechanism for vapor production cannot be extracted from these data. While it is possible that vapor is produced by a shock - induced reaction involving more than one of the original constituents, a simpler interpretation is that the vapor is made up of products of shock - induced decomposition reactions and/or simple vaporization of the constituents as would be expected to take place under the conditions of these experiments. Other sources of vapor could be water adsorbed on grain surfaces and air originally in the voids. Thus it is not necessary to invoke significant recombination reactions to explain the data. However, in the absence of ring - down control experiments, the possibility remains open. These conclusions are different from those of previous workers, but reassessment of a subset of the earlier data yields results consistent with the present work, i.e., the shock compression data do not provide evidence for strong exothermic reactions.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000; NA0003525
OSTI ID:
1599975
Report Number(s):
SAND-2017-5297; 653607
Resource Relation:
Related Information: Note: This report was written in 1995. It was re-formatted with light editing in 2017
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Shock compression response of highly reactive Ni + Al multilayered thin foils
Journal Article · Mon Mar 07 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Journal of Applied Physics · OSTI ID:1599975

Effects of tandem and colliding shock waves on the initiation of triaminotrinitrobenzene
Journal Article · Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 1995 · Journal of Applied Physics · OSTI ID:1599975

Insights into the shock initiation/detonation of homogeneous and heterogeneous HE
Conference · Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2001 · OSTI ID:1599975