The efficient activation by adding Energetic metallic particles outside high explosives: a New direction for composite explosives

Adding energetic metallic particles (EMPs) into high explosive (HE) will increase total energy output, while the energy enhancement differs with the structure of composite explosives (CE). To investigate the total energy of normal metallic explosives (n-CE) and the extreme special case of CE (s-CE, in which EMPs were loaded outside formula system of HE), four turns of inner explosion experiments were conducted in a cubic tank. Experimental results reveal that EMPs in the s-CE release 1.28 times more energy than n-CE, proving the s-CE also has a considerable energy-enhancement effect under certain conditions. Besides, the speed of total energy release of EMPs in n-CE is about 3 times faster than that of EMPs in s-CE. Meanwhile, the overpressure of shock wave in n-CE is higher, though the EMPs in s-CE are nano-particles. The abnormal energy release speed and the different blast wave enhancement mean that the activation mechanism of EMPs differs in different CEs. The dual-effect activation of EMPs is proposed in the paper. The excellent performance on extreme special case(s-CE) will decrease constraints against formula designing of composite explosives, and thus provide a new direction for composite explosives.