To get round two main difficulties of the kinetic study of fast reactions of high-temperature decomposition of energetic materials (EM) (spatial non-isothermality and self-inflammation) two new methods for sample preparation called “mechanical dilution” and “thermal dilution” were applied. In the first part of the presentation, some experimental and theoretical data on kinetics of fast high-temperature decomposition of some typical homogeneous and heterogeneous energetic materials (including pyroxylin, ammonia copper chromate, ammonium perchlorate, solid rocket propellants, and others) are given. In a number of cases, kinetic constants of fast reactions dominating at high temperatures were shown to significantly differ from those of low-temperature reactions. The second part of the presentation deals with a new method of thermal analysis—electrothermal analysis (ETA). By using a multi-channel high-speed optical pyrometer, variation of the temperature field in an electrically heated sample of conductive energetic material (or its mixture with metal powder) during its heating followed by thermal explosion is registered. Due to application of this method in the ETA-100 (allowing one to measure kinetic data at the temperature up to 3800 K with a time step as short as 0.1 ms, i.e., for full conversion times as short as 10−3 s) some important patterns of mechanisms of gasless combustion and explosion in SHS-mixtures (Si + C, Ni + Al, and Ti + C) were identified. More details regarding these and some additional important aspects can be found in [1, 2].
1. Shteinberg AS . Bystrye reaktsii v energoemkikh sistemakh. Russian Academy of Sciences: Moscow; 2006 (in Russian).
2. Shteinberg, AS 2008 Fast reactions in energetic materials: high-temperature decomposition of rocket propellants and explosives Springer-Verlag Berlin-Heidelberg.
3. Shteinberg AS , Knyazik VA. Electrocombustion. In: Proceedings of Zel’dovich Memorial. Moscow: ENAC; 1995. pp. 358–372.
4. Shteinberg, AS, Knyazik, VA 1992 Macrokinetics of high-temperature heterogeneous reactions: SHS aspects. Pure Appl Chem 64:965–976 .
5. Knyazik, VA, Shteinberg, AS, Gorovenko, VI 1993 Thermal analysis of carbide synthesis. J Therm Anal 40:363–371 .
6. Viljoen, H, Kostogorova, Y, Shteinberg, AS 2003 A macrokinetic study of the high-temperature solid-phase titanium-carbon reaction. Ind Eng Chem Res 42:6714–6719 .
7. Shteinberg, AS, Lin, YC, Son, SF, Mukasyan, AS 2010 Kinetics of high-temperature reaction in Ni-Al system: influence of mechanical activation. J Phys Chem A 114:6111–6116 .
8. Shteinberg, AS, Shcherbakov, VA, Munir, ZA 2001 Kinetics of combustion in the layered Ni-Al system. Combust Sci Technol 169:1–24 .
9. Maslov, VM, Borovinskaya, IP, Merzhanov, AG 1976 Problem of the mechanism of gasless combustion. Combust Explos Shock Waves 12:631–637 .
10. Lebrat, JP, Varma, A 1993 Some further studies in combustion synthesis of the YBa2Cu3O7-x superconductor. Combust Sci Technol 88:211–221 .
11. Naiborodenko Yu, S, Itin, VI 1975 Study of gasless combustion of powder mixtures of dissimilar metals. Combust Explos Shock Waves 11:293–300 .
12. Dyer, TS, Munir, ZA, Ruth, V 1994 The combustion synthesis of multilayer Ni-Al systems. Scr Metall Mater 30:1281–1286 .
13. Weihs TP . Self-propagating reactions in multilayer materials. In: Hand-book of thin film process technology. IOP: Orlando; 1997.
14. Ma, E, Thompson, CV, Clevenger, LA, Tu, KN 1990 Self-propagating explosive reactions in Al/Ni multilayer thin films. Appl Phys Lett 57:1262–1264 .
15. Knyazik, VA, Mezhanov, AG, Shteinberg, AS 1988 About mechanism of combustion in the Ti-C system. Dokl Phys Chem 301:689–694.
16. Gryadunov, AN, Shteinberg, AS, Dobler, EA 1991 High-speed impact-induced initiation of chemical reaction in the powder Ti-C system. Dokl Phys Chem 321:1009–1013.
17. Shteinberg AS , Berlin AA. Non-isothermal kinetics of high-temperature reactions in condensed energetic materials. In: F.J. Schelling, editor. Proc. 35th Pyrotechnics seminar; 2008. pp. 293–304.
18. Shteinberg, AS, Berlin, AA 2007 Macrokinetics of heterogeneous reaction in a mixture affected by a high-velocity shock. Dokl Chem 414:145–147 .