Small-scale characterisation of urea hydrogen peroxide explosive performance using heterodyne velocimetry

Urea Hydrogen Peroxide (UHP) is widely available in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. UHP exhibits the behaviour of a tertiary explosive and previous research from the same authors has highlighted its detonability at small-scale under heavy confinement. In this work, UHP performance parameters are further investigated by heterodyne velocimetry. An average detonation pressure of 3.7 GPa for UHP at a mean density of 0.75 g/cm3 has been determined using the impedance window method, corresponding to a 20% TNT equivalence for brisance. This result is consistent with calculation from empirical correlations. An average 3200 m/s detonation velocity was recorded using contact probes, in excellent agreement with measurements from passive optical probes. This small-scale experimental campaign, which was complementary to and consistent with previous research, has proven useful to characterise the performances of non-ideal explosives for risk assessment purposes.