Compatibility study of octahydro-1,3,5,7- tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine with selected insensitive explosives using multiple techniques

The present work explored the compatibility of octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX) with selected insensitive explosives including nitroguanidine (NQ), 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), 2,4,6-triamino-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene (TATB) and 2,6-diamino-3,5-dinitropyridine-1-oxide (ANPyO) through a combination of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) with multiple heating rates, the vacuum stability test (VST) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. For DSC studies of 2celcius/min heating rate based on STANAG 4147, HMX/ANPyO and HMX/TATB were regarded as compatible binary systems, while HMX/NQ and HMX/TNT had incompatible results. The thermal stability of the HMX/NQ and HMX/TNT mixtures were inferior to that of HMX, and the HMX/ANPyO and HMX/TATB mixtures became somewhat thermal stable compared to HMX. VST results further confirmed that HMX was incompatible with NQ and TNT, and compatible with ANPyO and TATB. Except for HMX/TATB, possible interaction was suspected for HMX/NQ, HMX/TNT and HMX/ANPyO binary systems from the analysis of XRD. The interaction may be the reflection of the peak temperature reduction for corresponding mixtures.