Diameter Effect Curve and Detonation Front Curvature Measurements for ANFO

Diameter effect and front curvature measurements are reported for rate stick experiments on commercially available prilled ANFO (ammonium nitrate-fuel oil) at ambient temperature. The shots were fired in paper tubes so as to provide minimal confinement. Diameters ranged from 77 mm. (≈ failure diameter) to 200 mm., with the tube length being ten diameters in all cases. Each detonation wave shape was fit with an analytic form, from which the local normal velocity D_n and total curvature κ were generated as a function of radius R, then plotted parametrically to generate a D_n(κ) function. The resulting behavior deviates substantially from that of previous explosives,(Hill,L.G., Bdzil,J.B., and Aslam,T.D., 11^th) Detonation Symposium, 1998^,(Hill,L.G., Bdzil,J.B., Davis,W.C., and Engelke,R., Shock Compression of Condensed Matter, 1999) in which curves for different stick sizes overlay well for small κ but diverge for large κ, and for which κ increases monotonically with R to achieve a maximum value at the charge edge. For ANFO, we find that κ achieves a maximum at an intermediate R and that D_n(κ) curves for different stick sizes are widely separated with no overlap whatsoever.