Thermal Gradient Effects on Local Hotspot Ignition in 1,3,5,7-Tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocane (HMX)

BW Hamilton and TC Germann, PROPELLANTS EXPLOSIVES PYROTECHNICS, 50, 54-60 (2025).

DOI: 10.1002/prep.70011

Understanding hotspot ignition, growth, and criticality, as well as the timescales of each, is crucial for parameterizing mesoscale and continuum-level models that rely on a statistical understanding of hotspots. However, these models often consider hotspots to have uniform temperatures or for hotspots of a given temperature and size to always behave the same. Therefore, using molecular dynamics simulations, we assess the influence of thermal distribution effects on hotspot local ignition and time to ignition in 1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocane (HMX) nanoscale hotspots. By assessing hotspots with a gradient driven from an initial two-temperature core-shell setup, we show that small increases in the core temperature under a constant average temperature can lead to order-of-magnitude effects on reaction and local ignition timescales.

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