The propagation of detonation waves in non-ideal condensed-phase explosives confined by high sound-speed materials

Highly non-ideal condensed-phase explosives used by the mining industry have a strong detonation velocity dependence on the charge dimension. Detonation velocities can be as low as one third of the theoretically calculated ideal detonation velocity in charge radii close to the failure radius. Under these detonation conditions the flow in the confiner can become subsonic, a flow condition under which classical shock-polar analysis is not applicable. This restriction prohibits the use of popular engineering models like detonation shock dynamics and Wood-Kirkwood type models under these confinement conditions. In addition, it has been found in the literature that subsonic flow in the confiner will increase the influence of the confining material on the detonation performance. In this work, we use a multi-phase model coupled to an elastic-plastic model (for the representation of a confiner) to explore the interaction of detonations under these confiner conditions. An ammonium nitrate based mining emulsion is investigated in aluminium and steel confinement of finite and infinite thickness representing the confiner as either a fluid or an elastic-plastic material. It is found that the presence of elastic waves is negligible close to ideal detonation conditions, but is important close to the failure radius and in detonation conditions with subsonic flow in the confiner. High sound-speed confiners support the detonation through energy transport ahead of the detonation front if desensitisation effects are negligible. The detonation front profiles are found to remain convex even in the most non-ideal detonation conditions, and the detonation front curvature only becomes concave in a localised region close to the confiner edge.