Shock Experiments on Explosive Single Crystals.

An increasing interest in the properties of single crystals of high explosives necessitates a continuing supply of these crystal samples. An overview of our capabilities for single crystal sample preparation and characterization will be discussed. Large single crystals are grown, then cut along specific Miller planes and polished. Perfection and orientation are confirmed through optical techniques and transmission Laue X-ray diffraction. Gas-gun impact experiments were performed on three orientations of HMX crystals. The experiments measured decay of the elastic precursor shock along the (110), (011), and (010) planes. The results show that the (010) plane has higher strength and lower decay rates, by a factor of almost 2, than the other two. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]