Tanner Research, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: Energetic materials find applications in diverse areas that affect our everyday lives. Th

Description

Energetic materials find applications in diverse areas that affect our everyday lives. Their handling is inherently risky, and accidents have been reported that has led to the loss of lives or severe injuries to the people involved. Consequences of accidents for humans and national security make it imperative to understand the mechanisms and physical factors that are fundamental to the initiation of energetics in order to reduce and eventually eliminate them. Electro-Magnetic Radiation (EMR) over a wide range of frequencies has been demonstrated to cause premature activation of explosive devices. In order to systematically predict the long term stability and enable improvements in safety and performance of energetic materials in the presence of EMR it is necessary to understand the microscopic mechanisms by which energy from EMR is absorbed in the material lattice and molecular pathways of transfer of this energy to the relevant vibrational energies of the energetic material. In Phase I, Tanner will develop a test bed to investigate energetics exposed to electromagnetic radiation by detecting their activation at the molecular level. We will identify molecular pathways that efficiently transfer energy from EMR to vibrational energies of the material, and develop a physic-chemical model for the kinetics of this energy transfer to quantify the reaction kinetics and activation energy.