WHY DOES AN EXPLOSIVE EXPLODE ?

Overview & Synopsis

At a macroscopic level, the detonation phenomenon is well known. In this aspect, how an energetic molecular crystal detonates has been described perfectly. But the question as to why one molecular compound detonates and why another one does not is still a real fundamental problem in spite of the technical progress both in ultra fast spectroscopy and in super computer simulations of molecular electronic states and molecular dynamics. However, we should like to emphasize the following fact previously discussed (PEYRARD... paper) in the two dimensional molecular dynamics model : as much as it is well established that the electronic molecular bond structure is involved in the detonation, the crystal structure seems also very strongly implicated in the phenomenon because it controls the energy dissipation factor which is mainly determined by the balance between the energy release when molecules dissociate and the energy transferred into transverse oscillations (1).