CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Explosives
William C. Davis

Explosions are violent, sudden, noisy, and startling. The human brain resists
the thought that they are proper subjects for calm contemplation and detailed
physical modeling. An engineer or scientist who begins to use explosives must
subdue his or her startle reflex and aversion to loud noises, and consider
exactly how explosives work. To begin, let us survey the vast range of uses
for explosives, and the great variety in chemicals that explode.

1.1. History

Black powder has been known for centuries and used in small quantities
for mining after about A.D. 1650, and in larger quantities after 1800. Black
powder is extremely dangerous to use because it is so easily ignited by any
spark. Its action is unpredictable because the burning rate and the pressure
developed depend on the strength of the rock confining it. The economic
surge of the industrial revolution demanded ore mining in hard rock, cutting
defiles through hills for railroads and highways, and excavating and leveling
of older structures before construction of huge factories. Black powder could
not meet the needs.
Black powder is called a low explosive. It contains both the fuel and the
oxydizer in the mixture, and is what is now called an energetic material.
When it is ignited it burns, and the rate of burning increases as pressure
develops from the release of gases, increasing the pressure still more. The
maximum pressure is determined by the strength of the surroundings, the
bore hole, for example. High explosives detonate rather than burn, and in a
detonation the confinement that leads to high temperatures and very rapid
reaction is provided by the explosive itself. The reaction is so rapid that the
expansion, spreading in a wave propagating at the local speed of sound, is not
fast enough to reduce the pressure appreciably, and the reaction is inertially
confined by the explosive mass. Modern explosives are high explosives.
Detonating explosives have been known at least as long ago as the
fifteenth century, when the alchemist Blasius Valentius produced "fulmi-
J. A. Zukas et al. (ed.), Explosive Effects and Applications
© Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 1998
2 1. Introduction to Explosives

nating gold," which was used by wandering entertainers to amaze the

public. Other high explosives were made over the years. From about 1830 on,
systematic and purposeful studies produced many new explosives. The revo-
lution in chemistry started in 1834 when Mitscherlich nitrated benzene to
nitrobenzene, and then in 1842 Zinin reduced nitrobenzene to aniline. The
demand for dyes fueled the search for new organic compounds, and many
of these were either explosives or closely related. It is now thought that
there are about 20,000 known molecules that are explosives, and perhaps
600 of those have been studied enough that they could be used or have
been used. In addition, there are many mixtures of fuels and oxidizers
that are explosives. Particularly influential for the development of explo-
sives was the work of Sobrero (1847), and his nitroglycerin became the
basis for the kieselguhr dynamite, a mixture of nitroglycerin and diatoma-
ceous earth, and gelatin dynamite, a mixture of nitroglycerin and guncotton.
Dynamite and gelatin dynamite were inventions of Alfred Nobel about 1867
and 1875, and they furnished the explosives needed for rapid expansion of
the world economy in the last half of the nineteenth century. Nobel also
invented the blasting cap in 1863, a detonator which will reliably initiate
these explosives. The cap was similar to caps filled with potassium chlorate
made by Forsyth in 1805, and with mercury fulminate by Ballot and Egg
in 1815, for the initiation of black powder, later using the safety fuse
invented by Bickford in 1831. Part of the fortune these inventions brought
to Nobel funded the much-coveted Nobel prize. There is no prize for work
on explosives.
Techniques for using explosives for mining developed rapidly. A remark-
able change occurred in the early 1950s when technological advance and
economic demand again coincided to revolutionize rock blasting. Tungsten
carbide cutting edges for drills became available, thus increasing the lifetime
of drill bits by a factor of hundreds. The small drill holes that had been used
for dynamite, typically 50 rom in diameter, were replaced by large holes,
200-250 rom in diameter, which had suddenly become easily obtainable. At
the same time, after a disastrous explosion in Texas City of a ship loaded
with fertilizer, it became obvious that an inexpensive explosive could be
made from ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. ANFO, as it is usually called
from the initials of its constituents, had been patented in Sweden in 1867, but
it had been used very little because it worked poorly in the small boreholes
available then. At this same time, the easily worked ore deposits were nearly
depleted. Low-grade ores required processing huge quantities of material,
and hard-rock ores required huge quantities of explosive. Also, coal mining
changed from underground mining to open-pit mining, and it became nec-
essary to remove large amounts of the overburden. Now ANFO and other
ammonium-nitrate-based explosives account for most of the explosive used
in the world today. Many other explosives are used, in smaller quantities,
for various applications.
Low explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics have been used from