Preexplosion phenomena in heavy metal azides

Effect of radiation treatment on the explosive conduction kinetics of heavy metal azides

“…1 and 2 shows that the initial portion of the kinetic curve (up to 50 nsec in Fig. 2), which is observed only in measurements using the contact circuit, corresponds to pre-explosion conduction, i.e., conduction in the still intact sample, which is in complete agreement with the data of [1][2][3]. Exactly this portion of the kinetic curve was also used in the experiments to study the effect of radiation treatment on pre-explosion conduction.…”

“…3): the steepness of the forward front of the pre-explosion conduction pulse and the time delay between the initiating pulse and the occurrence of the pre-explosion conduction signal change. 3 For a quantitative description of this effect, we used two parameters: τ 0 , the time interval between the ini- tiating pulse and the occurrence of a reliably recorded signal of pre-explosion conduction (Fig. 3) and α, the constant in the approximating exponential dependence of the forward front of the current signal I on time I ∼ exp α(t − τ 0 ).…”

“…The contact circuit was used to record both pre-explosion conduction and conduction in explosion products, and the contactless circuit only recorded conduction in the explosion products (after the closure of the gap resulting from the spread of the explosion products). A more detailed description of the equipment and measurement technique is given in [3].…”

“…Finding [1] and further investigation [2][3][4] of preexplosion conduction, i.e., the conduction observed in the time interval between the initiating pulse and the beginning of mechanical failure of high-explosive (HE) samples (≈10 −8 -10 −6 sec under normal experimental conditions [1][2][3]) have shown that the migration, capture, and recombination of electronic excitations of the crystal lattice (electrons, holes, exitons [2][3][4][5]) play an important (and possibly determining) role in the early (solid-state) stages of explosive decomposition. This allows one to control the processes occurring during initiation and early stages of explosive decomposition of HEs using traditional methods of solid-state physics (alloying, optical illumination, radiation treatment, etc.…”

Electrical effects in propellant compositions radiated by electrons

“…The chemical energy accumulated in the solid propellant can be released not only by standard initiation of combustion reactions but also in some other cases, e.g., by an electrical breakdown. By an example of initiating high explosives, it is demonstrated that an electrical breakdown initiated by pulses of fast electrons can lead to explosive conversion [5,6]. The point is that solid propellants are normally dielectrics in terms of their electrophysical properties [1,7] and can accumulate the static charge under the action of ionization radiation [8,9], which is extremely dangerous [7,10].…”