Reactive atomistic simulations of shock-induced initiation processes in mixtures of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil

AP Thompson and TR Shan, 18TH APS-SCCM AND 24TH AIRAPT, PTS 1-19, 500 (2014).

DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/500/5/052046

Ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil (ANFO) is a commonly used blasting agent. In this paper we investigated the shock properties of pure ammonium nitrate (AN) and two different mixtures of ammonium nitrate and n-dodecane by characterizing their Hugoniot states. We simulated shock compression of pure AN and ANFO mixtures using the Multi-scale Shock Technique, and observed differences in chemical reaction. We also performed a large-scale explicit sub-threshold shock of AN crystal with a 10 nm void filled with 4.4 wt% of n-dodecane. We observed the formation of hotspots and enhanced reactivity at the interface region between AN and n-dodecane molecules.

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