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Shock loading of inhomogeneous PBX

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Shock loading of a 3.6M-atom PBX model with a saw-tooth interface between RDX and its polymer binder; color represents slip, highest at the interface.

Work by Sergey Zybin and collaborators at Caltech to model shock-induced instabilities in explosive materials which have heterogeneous features, such as defects or interfaces, using the ReaxFF force field.

The figure shows shock loading of PBX in a 3.6 million atom model with a saw-tooth interface between RDX and its polymer binder. The color represents slip, which is highest at the interface.

Related publications

  • Elucidation of the dynamics for hot-spot initiation at nonuniform interfaces of highly shocked materials, Q. An, S. V. Zybin, W. A. Goddard III, A. Jaramillo-Botero, M. Blanco, and S.-N. Luo, Phys. Rev. B 84, 220101 (2011). doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.84.220101