Parameter Determination of an

Ignition and Growth Model from

Emulsion Explosive Tests
C Yi1, U Nyberg2 and D Johansson3

ABSTRACT
Emulsion explosives are a common industrial explosive and have a non-ideal detonation
behaviour. The detonation performance for a given product changes with the charge diameter,
ground conditions, connement and density. The burning process of an emulsion explosive has
been modelled with an ignition and growth model in the LS-DYNA code. The parameters in the
burning rate function are calibrated by the detonation velocities and the detonation front curvature
radii from emulsion explosive tests. A Perl program was developed for an efficient estimation of
the parameters, and the results show that the calibrated parameters can predict both detonation
velocities and the detonation front curvatures.

INTRODUCTION
Emulsion explosives are widely used by the mining industry
due to their low manufacturing cost, resistance to water,
ease of handling and excellent safety features (low risk of
accidental ignition) when being transported and stored. It
is important to predict the performance of these explosives
in a confined environment in order to optimise the blasting
results. It is well recognised that ammonium nitrate (AN)-
based explosives such as emulsion explosives exhibit strong,
non-ideal detonation behaviour since their performance is
influenced by charge diameter, density and confinement
(Kirby and Leiper, 1985; Braithwaite et al, 1990; Persson,
Holmberg and Lee, 1993; Forbes et al, 1992; Forbes and
Lemar, 1998; Esen, 2004). The oxidiser and fuel in AN-based
explosives are located on different molecules, leading to non-
ideal detonation behaviour over a large range of charge radii
(Schoch et al, 2013). This means that in this range, the velocity
of detonation (VoD) and the detonation front curvature
strongly depend on the confiner material, density and charge
diameter and cannot be accurately predicted by simple
detonation models (eg Chapman-Jouguet (CJ) theory).
The conventional theories of ideal detonation, for example
the CJ theory and the Zeldovich-Neumann-Doering (ZND)
theory, cannot be used to describe the non-ideality of an
explosive. They describe a plane detonation wave of an
instantaneous reaction (CJ theory) and a finite reaction zone
(ZND theory). The programmed burn model implemented
in some hydrodynamic codes such as LS-DYNA (Livermore
Software Technology Corporation, 2014) is based on the CJ
theory. With a constant input VoD value and CJ pressure, the
model simulates an idealised detonation under conditions
where the Jones-Wilkins-Lee (JWL) parameters have been
calibrated (eg by cylinder tests).
Much effort has been made to investigate the non-
ideality of explosives (Kennedy, 1995; Takahashi et al, 1999;
Hamashima, Kato and Itoh, 2004; Braithwaite, Cunningham
and Sharpe, 2006; Watt et al, 2012). In order to simulate the
non-ideality, the reactive flow and chemical kinetics of the
burning process should be included in the model. Several
non-ideal detonation models and/or theories have been
proposed to describe the detonation process of explosives
(Bdzil, 1981; Bdzil, Aslam and Short, 2002; Bdzil and
Stewart, 2007; Kirby and Leiper, 1985; Esen, 2008). Areview
of existing non-ideal detonation models was given by Esen
(2008). The popular Ignition and Growth (I&G) reactive
model (Lee and Tarver, 1980) is often used to study the
non-ideality of explosives (Souers, Garza and Vitello, 2002;
Lu and Kennedy, 2003; Price and Ghee, 2009) and has
been implemented in several hydrodynamic codes such as
LS-DYNA.
The Swedish Rock Engineering Research Foundation
(SveBeFo) carried out a series of VoD and detonation front
curvature measurements to investigate the properties
of emulsion explosives (Nyberg, Deng and Chen, 1994;
Nyberg and Deng, 1994). Numerical simulations for these
experiments were carried out with a self-developed reaction
rate equation, which was implemented in the LS-DYNA
code (Deng, Nie and Chen, 1995; Deng et al, 1999). In this
paper, the reaction rate parameters for the I&G reactive
model for emulsion explosives in light confinement were
calibrated from the detonation velocities and the curvature
radii of detonation fronts at different charge diameters
that were measured earlier (Nyberg, Deng and Chen,
1994). Because there are several unknown parameters in
the reaction rate function of the I&G reactive model, these

1. Associate Senior Lecturer, Swebrec at Lule University of Technology, Lule SE-971 87, Sweden. Email: changping.yi@ltu.se
2. Senior Research Engineer, Swebrec at Lule University of Technology, Lule SE-971 87, Sweden. Email: ulf.nyberg@ltu.se
3. Senior Lecturer, Swebrec at Lule University of Technology, Lule SE-971 87, Sweden. Email: daniel.johansson@ltu.se

11TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ROCK FRAGMENTATION BY BLASTING / SYDNEY, NSW, 2426 AUGUST 2015 585
C YI, U NYBERG AND D JOHANSSON

unknown parameters need to be adjusted iteratively to fit the
experimental results. The conventional method (eg Deng,
Nie and Chen, 1995; Deng et al, 1999) to get a set of suitable
parameters is often time-consuming. In this paper, a code
written in the Perl programming language (Christiansen,
Wall and Orwant, 2012) was developed to run the LS-DYNA
code, adjust parameters and get the results automatically,
which makes the parameter calibration more efficient.
IGNITION AND GROWTH REACTIVE MODEL IN
LS-DYNA
The I&G reactive model in LS-DYNA originated with the
work of Lee and Tarver (1980), and was refined in a number
of subsequent articles by Tarver and collaborators (Tarver,
Hallquist and Erickson, 1985; Tarver, Kury and Breithaupt,
1997). Although the model was initially built to study the
sensitivity of ideal high explosives, it essentially simulates
the non-idealities of explosives. The I&G reactive model
contains two equations of state (EoS): one for the unreacted
explosive and the other for its reaction products. Both
unreacted and product EoS are of the JWL form:
P = Ae-R1V + Be-R2V + ~Cv T V
where:
P is pressure
V is relative volume
T is temperature
is the Grneisen coefficient
Cv is the average heat capacity
A, B, R1 and R2 are constants
The mixing rule is:
V = ]1 - Fg Ve + FVp
where:
Ve is the unreacted explosive relative volume
Vp is the reacted explosive relative volume
F is the fraction reacted, where complete reaction means
that F = 1 and no reaction means that F = 0
This parameter is calculated by the I&G reactive rate
equation. The reaction rate law has three terms and each
is active for different values of the reacted fraction. This
three-term rate law describes the three stages of reaction
generally observed in the shock initiation and detonation of
heterogeneous solid explosives:
dF I ]1 - Fgb _ t t - 1 - a ix G ]1 - FgcF d p y G ]1 - Fge F f p z (3)
= + 1 + 2
dt 0
as it is compressed by the leading shock wave creating
heated volumes (hot spots) as the voids in the material
collapse. The fraction of explosive ignited is approximately
equal to the original void volume. The second reaction term
models the rapid formation of the major reaction product
gases (CO2, N2, H2O, CO, etc) in highly vibrationally excited
states and their subsequent expansion and equilibration. The
third term is used to describe the relatively slow diffusion-
controlled formation of the solid carbon particles in the form
of diamond, graphite or amorphous carbon (Tarver and
McGuire, 2002).
The parameters of two JWL EoS for the reacted and
unreacted explosive can be determined by experiments.
There are several unknown parameters in Equation 3. In
order to calibrate these parameters, iterative simulations need
to be conducted using LS-DYNA by adjusting the parameters
and repeating until a best fit to the experimental results is
obtained (Aldis, Quirk and Breithaupt, 1991).
CALIBRATION METHODOLOGY
A high resolution is required to capture the reaction of
explosives in the reaction zone, which is usually of the
order of millimetres. The elements of the model therefore
(1)
need to be small. An axi-symmetrical model was built and
discretised with rectangular elements. The element size was
0.02 cm, which is sufficient for resolving the reaction details
of commercial explosives according to Deng, Nie and Chen
(1995). After the LS-DYNA calculation, the coordinates of the
centroids of the elements with the maximum pressure along
the element rows (in the detonation front direction) at a certain
time were output. The fitted curve for these coordinates can
be treated as the detonation front at the selected time (Bergh,
personal communication, 2013). The loci of the detonation
fronts at two different times were output (see Figure 1) and
(2) the distance (S in Figure 1) between the two sets of vertices
were calculated. Since the time difference is known, the VoD
can then be estimated.
The detonation front can be fitted to several forms, such
as circles, second order polynomials, ellipses and the
natural logarithm of a Bessel function (Kennedy, 1998). In
this paper, the detonation front is fitted with an ellipse of the
form:
R2 = aZ2 + bZ + c (4)
where:
R and Z are the radial and axial coordinates respectively
a, b and c are the fitting constants

where:
F is the fraction reacted
t is time
0 is initial density
is the current density
p is the pressure
I, b, a, x, G1, c, d, y, G2, e, f and z are constants for the ignition
term and the two growth terms
Three more constants are added to the model: Fmxig, Fmxgr
and Fmngr, which limit the contributions of the three terms
respectively: a maximum reacted fraction Fmxig for the first
term, a maximum fraction Fmxgr for the second term and a
minimum fraction Fmngr for the last term. For detonation, FIG 1 Scheme for acquiring velocity of detonation.
the first reaction term represents the ignition of the explosive (A) Detonation front at T2; (B) detonation front at T1.

586 11TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ROCK FRAGMENTATION BY BLASTING / SYDNEY, NSW, 2426 AUGUST 2015
 PARAMETER DETERMINATION OF AN IGNITION AND GROWTH MODEL FROM EMULSION EXPLOSIVE TESTS

The curvature radius of the detonation front is a function of TABLE 1

R (or Z) and is calculated by the following equation: Percentage of contents and density of the emulsion explosive.
Rm AN (%) EM (%) 7514oil (%) Water (%) MB (%) 0 (g/cm3)
k ]Rg = (5)
^1 + Rl2h3 2
77.49 0.748 3.926 14.76 3.075 1.165
As mentioned earlier, the calibration process of reaction AN ammonium nitrate; EM Anfomul S6 emulsifier from Croda Oleochmicals; 7514oil ES 75-14
rate parameters is often time consuming. The values of the mineral oil from Mobil Oil; MB B23/500 mircoballoons from 3M.
reaction rate parameters should be adjusted iteratively.
The calculated VoD and the radius of the detonation
front curvature needs to be iteratively compared with the
experimental results. A set of suitable values for the rate
parameters that fit predicted data well to all experimental
results can be calibrated after these iterative simulations and
comparisons. To improve the efficiency of calibration, a code
written in the Perl programming language was developed
to perform the modelling. The flow chart of the calibration
process is shown in Figure 2.
LS-Prepost in Figure 2 is the pre- and post-processor
for the LS-DYNA code, while Gnuplot is a command-line
program that can generate two- and three-dimensional plots
of functions, data and data fits. The processes in the dashed
frame can be processed by the Perl code. All the results, such
as VoD, the parameters of an ellipse for a fitted detonation
front, the figure (shape) of a fitted detonation front, the figure
(shape) of the detonation front curvature radii and the value of
the radius of curvature at the vertex of the detonation front, can
be output within two minutes after the LS-DYNA calculation.
The code can also vary the values of the parameters and run
LS-DYNA with each value as different cases. FIG 3 LS-DYNA computation set-up.

parameters. After a certain computation time, the first part

CALIBRATED RESULTS FOR AN EMULSION
EXPLOSIVE
Several sets of cylinder expansion experiments with different
charge diameters in a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)
tube were carried out by Nyberg, Deng and Chen (1994) to
investigate the VoD and detonation front curvature of an
emulsion explosive. Eight of them recorded both VoD and
detonation fronts successfully. The composition and density
of the emulsion explosive are listed in Table 1.
The LS-DYNA set-up for the computations is shown in
Figure 3. In order to avoid numerical instability due to large
deformations, the pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) booster
consists of two parts, with both parts having exactly the same
(PETN 1 in Figure 3) is deleted so that the computation can be
carried out smoothly to the end. Axi-symmetric geometry is
used in the computation.
The parameters for the JWL EoS for reacted and unreacted
explosives are from Deng, Nie and Chen (1995) and are
listed in Table 2. The dynamic behaviour of PMMA is
modelled with the mat_elastic_plastic_hydro model in
LS-DYNA combined with a Grneisen EoS, and the
parameters for PMMA are listed in Table 3. The PETN that
was treated as an ideal explosive was modelled with the mat_
high_explosive_burn model in LS-DYNA combined with
a JWL EoS. The parameters for PETN are listed in Table 4.
After iterative simulations, a set of suitable parameters for
the reaction rate function in the I&G reactive model were
calibrated for the emulsion explosive (Table 2) (the columns
under Reaction rate parameters for three terms model). The

TABLE 2
Jones-Wilkins-Lee (JWL) parameters and the calibrated reaction rate parameters.

JWL parameters JWL parameters Reaction rate parameters

of the unreacted of the reaction for three terms model
explosive products
A (GPa) 4 269.3 A(GPa) 444.23 I 40.0 G2 200
B (GPa) -0.0601 B(GPa) 15.47 b 0.667 e 0.667
R1 22.628 R1 6.1045 a 0.09 f 1.00
R2 1.7907 R2 2.2733 x 7.00 z 2.0
3.0908 0.9353 G1 41.7 Fmixg 0.01
Cv(GPa/K) 1.0885e-3 Cv(GPa/K) 1.5557e-3 c 0.667 Fmxgr 0.80
T(K) 298.0 E0 (GPa) 3.348 d 0.333 Fmngr 0.80

FIG 2 The flow chart for the calibration process. y 1.12

11TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON ROCK FRAGMENTATION BY BLASTING / SYDNEY, NSW, 2426 AUGUST 2015 587
C YI, U NYBERG AND D JOHANSSON

TABLE 3
Parameters for polymethyl methacrylate (Deng, Nie and Chen, 1995).

Density Shear modulus Yield stress C S1 S2 S3 Gama0 a

1185 kg/m3 1.2 GPa 76 MPa 2 572 m/s 1.536 0 0 0.97 0

TABLE 4
Parameters for pentaerythritol tetranitrate (Deng, Nie and Chen, 1995).

Density VoD CJ pressure A B R1 R2 E0

1500 kg/m 3
7 450 m/s 22 GPa 625.3 GPa 23.29 GPa 5.25 1.6 0.28 7.78 GPa

results of the simulations, together with the experimental
results, are shown in Figure 4. It can be seen that both VoD and
the radii of detonation front curvature are in good agreement
with the experimental data, which indicates that the calibrated
reaction rate parameters are suitable to simulate the non-
idealities of the emulsion explosive at density 1.165g/cm3.
CONCLUSIONS
The reaction rate parameters in the I&G reactive model were
calibrated for an emulsion explosive from the experimental
detonation velocities and the detonation front curvature
radii at different charge diameters. A code written in the
Perl programming language was developed to make the
parameter calibration process efficient. Both the predicted
6.0
5.5
VOD (Km/s)
VoD and the predicted radii of detonation front curvature at
different charge diameters using the calibrated parameters are
in good agreement with the experimental data. The calibrated
reaction rate parameters can be used for numerical modelling
for the emulsion explosive.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Magnus Bergh of the Swedish
Defence Research Agency for his useful discussion and help
with the Perl programming.
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