PBXN-9 Ignition Kinetics and Deflagration Rates

The ignition kinetics and deflagration rates of PBXN-9 were measured using specially designed instruments at LLNL and compared with previous work on similar HMX based materials. Ignition kinetics were measured based on the One Dimensional Time-to-Explosion combined with ALE3D modeling. Results of these experiments indicate that PBXN-9 behaves much like other HMX based materials (i.e. LX-04, LX-07, LX-10 and PBX-9501) and the dominant factor in these experiments is the type of explosive, not the type of binder/plasticizer. In contrast, the deflagration behavior of PBXN-9 is quite different from similar high weight percent HMX based materials (i.e LX-10, LX-07 and PBX-9501). PBXN-9 burns in a laminar manner over the full pressure range studied (0-310 MPa) unlike LX-10, LX-07, and PBX-9501. The difference in deflagration behavior is attributed to the nature of the binder/plasticizer alone or in conjunction with the volume of binder present in PBXN-9