Characterization of plastic-bonded explosives by pyrolysis gas chromatography and multivariate data analysis. Part I: Setup of the method
✍ Scribed by M. Rietjens; E. R. J. Wils
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1995
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 627 KB
- Volume
- 20
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0721-3115
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
A further development of the procedure based on pyrolysis gas chromatography (Py‐GC) for the characterization of plastic‐bonded explosives (PBX's) is described. After grinding, the PBX samples were pressed on a pyrolysis wire followed by Py‐GC analysis. The peak areas obtained were normalized and subsequently submitted to multivariate data analysis. The use of principal component analysis (PCA) was tested on five samples which differed slightly in composition and age. The results were promising and showed that PCA is a powerful tool for the differentiation between PBX samples. The pyrolysis conditions were examined and optimized. A dependency was found between the sample loading (mass) and the position of the samples in a PCA score plot and indicates that control of the sample loading is important in obtaining reproducible results. For PBX samples an optimum pyrolysis temperature was determined around 540°C, close to the previous selected pyrolysis temperature of 610°C. In examining the pyrolysis at lower temperatures it was found that RDX or HMX is pyrolyzed independently from the binder. It appeared that PBX samples were inhomogeneous despite a thorough mixing of the constituents during preparation.