Evaluation of the Thermochemical Code - CHEETAH 2.0 for Modelling Explosives Performance
Abstract
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory CHEETAH 2.0 program has been used to analyse a number of conventional ideal explosive ingredients, ideal explosive compositions, non-ideal explosive compositions, and new and proposed explosives. It has also been used to study the effect of heats of formation and different types of binders on the predicted performance of explosive formulations. It is shown that the CHEETAH 2.0 program using the traditional Chapman-Jouget thermodynamic detonation theory can accurately model and predict performance of new explosive materials and of ideal explosives. It can also predict reasonably accurately experimental results for mildly non-ideal explosives. It is also shown that the CHEETAH 2.0 program based on the Wood-Kirkwood detonation theory can successfully model both mildly non-ideal explosives and moderate non-ideal explosives. It can replicate many of the features of non-ideal explosives such as detonation velocities and sonic reaction zone widths, and explosive properties such as detonation velocities as a function of the charge radius. In attempting to apply CHEETAH 2.0 to PBXW-115(Aust) using the estimated radius of curvature for the detonation front built into the code, difficulties were initially encountered in achieving convergence to a self-propagating detonation velocity. However, if an experimentally determined radius of curvature is used, good results are achieved from "Kinetic" CHEETAH, reflecting non-ideal features such as detonation velocities dependent on charge radius. Finally, in view of the strengths and limitations of CHEETAH, recommendations for the future work are made.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA396687
Entities
People
- Jing P. Lu
Organizations
- Defence Science and Technology Group