Application of Detonation Shock Dynamics to the Propagai’ion of a Detonation in Nitromethane in a Packed Inert Particle Bed

A multidimensional implementation of DSD, formulated with the level set method, is applied to track the propagation of a detonation wave in a heterogeneous explosive consisting of an array of inert cylindrical obstacles with a liquid explosive in the interstitial space. With the Huygens assumption, the average detonation velocity through the explosive is less than that for the liquid explosive alone, due to the increased path length. When the normal detonation velocity is assumed to depend on front curvature, there is an additional, smaller reduction in the detonation velocity, which depends on the cylinder material. The detonation velocity deficits obtained in the computations are of the same order as those observed experimentally for a heterogeneous explosive consisting of a packed bed of spherical inert beads saturated with sensitized nitromethane. The DSD computations are relevant to the experimental results in the large-bead limit in which the pore dimension is large enough to support the propagation of discrete detonation wavelets in the interstitial liquid between the beads.