Abstract
Various hazard and vulnerability scenarios for energetic materials involve multiple shock compression. Triaminotrinitrobenzene ( TATB) based explosives are comparatively insensitive to shocks of low impacts and therefore considered suitable materials for the devices vulnerable to low shock impacts. Multiple shock compression may further desensitize these materials. Although the desensitization criterion for HMX based plastic bonded explosive PBX9404 has long been determined, no such criterion for TATB based explosives has yet been determined. In the present paper the desensitization criterion for TATB based explosive is proposed, based on recently performed experiments. By using a model which employs the proposed criterion to account for the desensitization effects in TATB based explosives, numerical simulations of the multiple shock experiments have been performed. The calculated results agree closely with the experimental results.