Effect of aluminum on the acceleration ability of composite formulations based on regular high explosives

The effect of addition of aluminum powders, including nanosized powders, on the acceleration ability of explosive compositions as studied by standard methods is examined. The analysis is based both on literature data and results obtained at the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics RAS. A brief description of the methods and criteria for evaluating the acceleration ability, including the Gurney velocity, is presented. It is shown that the addition of highly dispersed aluminum can increase the acceleration ability of compositions as compared to that of individual HEs. Nanosized aluminum also improves the acceleration ability, but the observed increase is somewhat lower than for micron-sized aluminum because of a high content of alumina in nanoparticles. The possibility of increasing the acceleration ability by adding nanosized aluminum to CL-20 powerful HE is considered.