Aluminum Powder Heat and Combustion Modeling Inside the Detonation Products of High Explosives

Aluminum particles are currently used in high explosives to improve blast and ballistic efficiencies. While their heat and combustion modeling has been the scope of many studies in gas-aluminum detonation and in propellant combustion, it has not been completely addressed in detonation products of condensed high explosives (HE). In gas-aluminum detonation and propellant combustion, it is generally assumed a constant aluminum melting temperature, incompressible particles and uniform temperature inside the particles. The thermodynamic states obtained inside such situations are far from those obtained in high explosive detonation. In particular, the aluminum melting temperature cannot be considered constant and the hypothesis of temperature uniformity inside the aluminum particles is no longer valid for particles heated by a high speed and high temperature flow. This paper proposes a new model of aluminum particles heating and combustion in the high speed flow generated by HE detonation, based on a two-phase approach.