Technical Approach

Researchers will develop energetic formulations incorporating cyclic N,N′-dinitrourea derivatives as a replacement for currently used energetics like RDX. These compounds have similar explosive performance parameters to conventional nitramine explosives but are significantly more hydrolytically reactive. These properties make them attractive candidates for explosive fillers in self-remediating munitions. Several of these types of compounds have received some development over the last couple of decades (predominantly in other countries). Specific examples include tetranitroglycoluril (TNGU or Sorguyl) and hexanitrohexaazatricyclododecanedione (HHTDD). During a recently completed SERDP Exploratory Development effort (WP-1624), researchers quantified the susceptibility of these ingredients to environmental hydrolysis and demonstrated that they show acceptable stability for processing into munitions, but also undergo sufficiently rapid degradation when exposed to environmental elements (e.g., high humidity or rain) to be characterized as "self-remediating." Thus the formulation of these hydrolyzable explosive ingredients into self-remediating plastic bonded explosives (PBX) should be feasible so long as the PBX binder system produces no hazardous degradation products and permits relatively fast water permeation for the hydrolysis of the dinitrourea compounds.