Detonation Performance Experiments, Modeling, and Scaling Analysis for Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) High Explosive

Abstract

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) is a commonly used high explosive (HE) for detonator, fusing, and booster assemblies. Despite its popularity, detailed detonation performance data is relatively sparse. The large operational density range of PETN requires a significant number of tests to characterize experimentally. Additionally, its short reaction zone requires test assemblies to be very small relative to other common explosives to quantify the effect of confinement and geometry on the explosive performance. In this study, PETN rate sticks and cylinder tests are fielded at the smallest known scales (3‐mm HE diameter) at a density of 1.65 g/cm3. The resulting data verifies that the flow satisfies continuum measurement at this scale, and analysis yields a Detonation Shock Dynamics (DSD) propagation law and Jones‐Wilkins‐Lee (JWL) product EOS for programmed burn detonation modeling. This work also provides the first recorded front shape measurements of PETN. Together with previously obtained data and models for other explosive densities, a scaling analysis is presented of the detonation performance of PETN for a wide range of explosive densities.