Research on Irreversible Growth Mechanism of PBX due to Thermal Cycling

Current experiments show that the TATB-based polymer bonded explosives (PBX) will experience irreversible growth when suffered temperature cycling load. Although some studies have already been done on this, the cause of irreversible growth is still confusing, and the mechanism is not clear. In order to study the irreversible growth of PBX under temperature cycling load, an thermal-viscoelastic model is established, Based on the Burgers model which considering the influence of different temperatures on the creep properties of PBX. The analysis shows that the irreversible growth of PBX produced by the different creep properties of high and low temperature during the thermal cycling. Comparing with low temperature, the creep rate of PBX is faster and the deformation is larger at high temperature, which lead to the irreversible growth of PBX.