Prediction of shock response of pyrotechnic mixtures from thermal analysis

The thermal behavior of metal, oxide, and oxidizer mixtures, some with fluorine compound additions, has been studied in order to examine the influence of thermal properties on the initiation conditions for chemical reaction of pyrotechnic powders under dynamic loading conditions. The autoignition energies of the mixtures obtained from thermal analyses were compared with shock initiation energies, determined from planar shock measurements. Although some mixtures showed an approximate equivalency between the energies obtained from the two different experiments, the experimental results indicated that any comparison should be made with great care.