Study on Ignition Mechanism and Shockwave Characteristics of Nitramine Powders Ignited by Microsecond Exploding Wire Plasma

Based on high pulsed power technology, electrical explosion is increasingly utilized to generate shock waves with high pressure. To further magnify the shock wave pressure, we have proposed a novel technique by using energetic materials ignited by the plasma of microsecond wire explosion. Organic derivatives of nitramide, termed nitroamines, are widely used as powerful and relatively insensitive explosives. In this paper, we investigated the shockwave characteristics of nitramine (RDX and HMX) powders ignited by exploding copper wire (diameter 0.3 mm and length 60 mm). With charge voltage of 24 kV and powder mass about 6.0 g, the most evident experimental results suggested that the RDX load possessed higher peak pressure of 11.38 MPa and larger areal impulse of 503.02 MPa·μs, comparing with the shock wave of HMX load (7.22 MPa and 371.28 MPa·μs). Moreover, the RDX load also had greater ascent rate of pressure, which was nearly twofold of that of the HMX load. Finally, a simple multi-factor ignition mechanism for nitramine powder under microsecond exploding wire plasma was proposed and discussed.