Correctness of determination of energetic materials high temperature decomposition kinetics

Abstract

Abstract The kinetic parameters of high temperature decomposition kinetics are widely used in evaluating the characteristics of thermal explosion, ignition and combustion of energetic materials. At present, the true and correct data on the high temperature kinetics of energetic materials condensed phase reactions are unknown and probably will remain unattainable in the nearest future. This is because of enormous technical difficulties to obtain such information and the absence of proper theoretical approaches for treatment of non-isothermal data. Evidently, with highly exothermic reactions it is impossible to conduct experiments at elevated temperatures using approaches of a low heating rate or isothermal ones. The improvement of characteristics of existing devices for thermal analysis is impeded by both technical complications and difficulties of performing experiments with ultrathin specimens of energetic material to ensure the conditions of uniform heat-up of the bulk of the substance. Based on the results of numerical simulation it is shown in this paper that the approach suggested 50 years ago by A. G. Merzhanov of using ignition delay data for deriving high temperature kinetics was not theoretically justified and can provide only very approximate values for such kinetics. The paper concludes on the today’s relevance of the tasks on elaboration of mathematically justified techniques for determining kinetic parameters of global exothermic condensed-phase reaction, which will be based on the experiments on EMs ignition.