Structure-Property Correlations in Primary Explosives.

From discussions with more than seventy explosive experts, and from a critical survey of journals and reports, the following conclusions have been reached. The basic difference between a primary and a secondary explosive is that a primary undergoes a faster transition from deflagration to detonation. The problem is to develop a model that will predict the time for detonation to deflagration transition DDT from chemical structure alone. This problem has been around for many decades. It is made particularly difficult by too many variables and the lack of quantitative data. A research program was proposed to solve the problem. The first step in the research is to measure the time for DDT for three cast primary explosives, namely, 1- and 2-methyl-5-nitrotetrazole and 5-azidotetrazole.