The violence of reaction from a fast projectile fired into heated PBX 9502
The shock sensitivity of hot PBX 9502 is of concern in abnormal combined insult situations. A series of fragment impacts into thin aluminum cased PBX 9502 heated to various temperatures was performed. The explosive was tightly radially confined but effectively unconfined axially. A 15.5 mm diameter by 3 mm thick heavy tungsten fragment (17.5 g/cc) fired at a velocity of approximately 1.4 km s –1 imparted an initial shock pressure of ≈15 GPa into the explosive. Under one dimensional shock conditions, the run to detonation in PBX 9502 at ambient temperature and at this pressure is ≈5 mm, however, given the small dimensions of the fragment in this insult, the pressure is quickly released from the edge so that a dying reaction is created. The situation is very different at higher explosive temperatures when the shock sensitivity of lightly confined PBX 9502 is much greater. Under these specific insult conditions, detonations were not observed at 22 and 70°C, but were observed at 170 and 108°C. The significance of these results is discussed.