The pulsed electrical excitation of reactive metals like aluminum in water triggers a fast and highly energetic chemical reaction generating gaseous products. For applications such as fuses, safe explosives or fast gas generation, it is desirable to maximize the ratio of conductor mass to stored electrical energy while rapidly attaining a high resistive state. Various techniques have been used ...

Survey spectra of single-crystal HMX (octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine), RDX (hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine), and PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) were acquired in the region from 10 to 80 cm(-1) using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. The spectra were taken at temperatures ranging from 8.4 to 300 K. Generally, the spectra show multiple absorption peaks in the ran...

We used molecular dynamics and the empirical potential for carbon LCBOPII to simulate the nucleation/growth process of carbon clusters both in vacuum and under pressure. In vacuum, our results show that the growth process is homogeneous and yields mainly sp(2) structures such as fullerenes. We used an argon gas and Lennard-Jones potentials to mimic the high pressures and temperatures reached du...

Specialized detector dogs are increasingly being utilized for the detection of modern threats. The Vapor Wake® (VW) dog was developed to create a dog phenotype ideally suited for detecting hand-carried and body-worn explosives. VW dogs (VWDs) are trained to sample and alert to target odors in the aerodynamic wakes of moving persons, which entrains vapor and small particles from the person. The ...

Bertram Hopkinson was prescient in writing of the importance of better measuring, albeit better understanding, the nature of high rate deformation of materials in general and, in particular, of the importance of heat in initiating detonation of explosives. This report deals with these subjects in terms of post-Hopkinson crystal dislocation mechanics applied to high rate deformations, including ...

The body scanning device, used at some airports to view through passenger's clothing to the surface of the skin, is considered to be a major improvement toward ensuring that weapons or explosives are not carried onto commercial aircraft, making airline travel safer, and the nation more secure. In the ten years since September 11, 2001, airport security has become increasingly invasive. Air pass...

The feasibility of using antihydrogen for igniting inertial confinement fusion pellets or triggering large-scale thermonuclear explosions is investigated. The number of antiproton annihilations required to start a thermonuclear burn wave in either DT or Li2DT is found to be about 10/κ, where κ is the compression factor of the fuel to be ignited. In the second part, the technologies for producin...

Standoff laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has previously been used to classify trace residues as either hazardous (explosives, biological, etc.) or benign. Correct classification can become more difficult depending on the surface/substrate underneath the residue due to variations in the laser-material interaction. In addition, classification can become problematic if the substrate ma...

The upsurge in terrorist activity has generated tremendous demand for innovative tools capable of detecting major industrial, military, and home-made (improvised) explosives. Fast, sensitive, and reliable detection of explosives in the field is a very important issue in nowadays. CE, especially in its miniaturized format (lab-on-a-chip), offers great possibilities to create portable, field depl...

The combustion of a well-stirred system of gases which result from the decomposition of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX), a common solid explosive, is studied using the technique of intrinsic low-dimensional manifolds (ILDM). The method provides a systematic way to overcome the severe stiffness which is associated with full models of gas phase RDX combustion, and thus significantly improve c...