Explosives research and development is a constant balance of tradeoffs between energetic performance and material sensitivity.  One solution to optimizing a formulation for maximum performance with minimal sensitivity is energy partitioning where non-crystalline energetic binder materials are used to reduce the concentration of highly sensitive crystalline explosive ingredients.  For this reason, a cast-cure binder system containing a novel energetic pre-polymer has been considered to replace the binders of legacy formulations.  This binder is hydroxyl-terminated and cured through carbamate formation with isocyanates.  In order for the explosive formulation to be tested; two types of statistical optimizations were performed.  First, the binder components and cure chemistry were optimized through a factorial design.  Second, thermodynamic calculations were used to model explosive performance characteristics in order to maximize the amount of binder while still meeting established performance goals.  Both optimizations were analyzed using JMP statistical modeling software to balance trade-offs and visualize the working design space.  This presentation will cover the background of cast cure explosive formulations plus the binder and explosive formulation optimizations.  Additionally, a live walk through of the JMP software will be performed in order to demonstrate its utility in solving such problems in chemistry.<br/>

High-energy explosives with novel binder optimizations guided by JMP

251st National Meeting (2016)

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