What is it about?
Explosives that are produced by 3D printing have internal voids, either purposely introduced or through artifacts of the process, that interact and affect the detonation characteristics of the explosive. This work images the interplay of these voids that are purposely placed in regular alignment to each other.
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Why is it important?
The application of Additive Manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, to High Explosive (HE) materials provides many advantages to traditional manufacturing in safety, environmental and performance. The method itself introduces artifacts in to the material, both purposefully introduced as well as unintended, that need to be better understood in order to maximize the performance of the fabricated part, and to exploit these effects for new capabilities. This manuscript highlights the application of a bench-top flash x-ray technique developed at Los Alamos National Lab to give insights as to what is happening inside of the explosive as it is detonating, allowing us to study these extremely fast interactions.
Perspectives
3D printing enables the fabrication of complex 3-dimensional explosive parts, but the effects of internal structure on detonation can’t be observed with typical high-speed video that only images the surface of the detonating material. This work demonstrates that benchtop flash x-ray radiography can be used to observe the internal structure of 3D-printed explosives as they detonate, which will inform the design of new, novel energetic material structures.
Alex Mueller
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Flash x-ray radiography analysis of detonation wave propagation in additive-manufactured high explosives, Journal of Applied Physics, May 2023, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0146540.
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