Developing small-scale tests to predict explosivity

Materials which release significant heat upon decomposition are energetic materials. Some of these are also explosives. Seeking a correlation with detonability of large quantities of energetic materials, four laboratory tests were used. The characteristics considered indicative of detonability were ability to fragment a metal casing, when initiated by a detonator, and ability to produce large quantities of gas and heat. The best developed of these tests is differential scanning calorimetry. It has already been pioneered by other researchers. A limitation of this study is that large-scale detonability remains unknown for a number of materials examined; thus, it is difficult to sufficiently evaluate the success of the small-scale analyses.