High explosive violent reaction (HEVR) from slow heating conditions

The high explosives (HEs) developed and used at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are designed to be insensitive to impact and thermal insults under all but the most extreme conditions. Nevertheless, violent reactions do occasionally occur when HE is involved in an accident. The HE response is closely dependent on the type of external stimulus that initiates the reaction. For example, fast heating of conventional HE will probably result in fairly benign burning, while long-term, slow heating of conventional HE is more likely to produce an HEVR that will do much more damage to the immediate surroundings. An HEVR (High Explosive Violent Reaction) can be defined as the rapid release of energy from an explosive that ranges from slightly faster than a deflagration (very rapid burning) to a reaction that approaches a detonation. A number of thermal analyses have been done to determine slow heat/cook-off conditions that produce HE self-heating that can build up to a catastrophic runaway reaction. The author specifies the conditions that control reaction violence, describes experiments that produced an HEVR, describes analyses done to determine a heating rate threshold for HEVR, and lists possible HEVR situations