Energy Localization Efficiency in TATB Pore Collapse Mechanisms

TL;DR

This study investigates how pore collapse mechanisms in TATB under different shock conditions influence energy localization and hotspot formation, revealing unique behaviors compared to other energetic materials.

Contribution

The paper provides detailed simulations of pore collapse in TATB across various conditions, highlighting distinct energy localization mechanisms and their effects on hotspot temperatures.

Findings

Weak shocks lead to more efficient energy localization but lower temperatures.

Strong shocks cause hydrodynamic-like collapse with higher hotspot temperatures.

Hotspot temperature trends in TATB differ significantly from other energetic materials.

Abstract

Atomistic and continuum scale modeling efforts have shown that shock induced collapse of porosity can occur via a wide range of mechanisms dependent on pore morphology, shockwave pressure, and material properties. The mechanisms that occur under weaker shocks tend to be more efficient at localizing thermal energy, but do not result in high, absolute temperatures or spatially large localizations compared to mechanisms found under strong shock conditions. However, the energetic material TATB undergoes a wide range of collapse mechanisms that are not typical of similar materials, leaving the collapse mechanisms and the resultant energy localization from collapse, i.e., hotspots, relatively uncharacterized. Therefore, we present pore collapse simulations of cylindrical pores in TATB for a wide range of pore sizes and shock strengths that trigger viscoplastic collapses that occur almost entirely perpendicular to the shock direction for weak shocks and hydrodynamic-like collapses for strong shocks that do not break the strong hydrogen bonds of the TATB basal planes. The resulting hotspot temperature fields from these mechanisms follow trends that differ considerably from other energetic materials; hence we compare them under normalized temperature values to assess the relative efficiency of each mechanism to localize energy. The local intra-molecular strain energy of the hotspots is also assessed to better understand the physical mechanisms behind the phenomena that leads to a latent potential energy.