Cylinder test wall velocity profiles and product energy for an ammonium nitrate and aluminum explosive

Ammonium nitrate mixed with aluminum powder forms a non-ideal explosive often referred to as ammonal. Non-ideal detonation can result in significant energy release behind the detonation sonic surface that does not contribute to the detonation velocity, but may affect the expansion energy of the product gases. In this work, we use scaled cylinder expansion tests to characterize the product energy variation with scale for ammonal. The results of two cylinder tests with 50.8-mm and 72.6-mm inner diameters are compared to prior data at other scales. We find that cylinder wall velocity increases with increasing charge diameter and also with increasing charge length.