Equation of state of polytetrafluoroethylene

The present drive to make munitions as safe as is feasible and to develop predictive models describing their constitutive response; has led to the development and production of,plastic bonded explosives and propellants. There is a range of elastomers used as binder materials with the energetic components. One of these is known as Kel-F-800(TM).(poly-chloro-trifluroethylene) whose structure is in some ways analogous to that of poly-tetrafluoroethylene (PTFE or Teflon). Thus, it is of interest to assess the mechanical behavior of Teflon and to compare the response of five different production Teflon materials, two of which were produced in pedigree form, one as-received product, and two from previous, in-depth literature studies. The equations of state of these variants were quantified by conducting a series of shock impact experiments in which both pressure-particle velocity and shock velocity-particle velocity dependencies were measured. The compressive behavior of Teflon, based upon the results of this study, appears to be independent of the production route and additives introduced. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.