Chemical Classification of Explosives

Abstract

This work comprehensively reviews some fundamental concepts about explosives and their two commonly used classifications based on either their velocity of detonation or their application. These classifications are highly useful in the military/legal field, but completely useless for the chemical determination of explosives. Because of this reason, a classification of explosives based on their chemical composition is comprehensively revised, discussed and updated. This classification seeks to merge those dispersed chemical classifications of explosives found in literature into a unique general classification, which might be useful for every researcher dealing with the analytical chemical identification of explosives. In the knowledge of the chemical composition of explosives, the most adequate analytical techniques to determine them are finally discussed.

Keywords:

• Classification of explosives
• chemical classification
• individual explosive molecules
• oxidizer-fuel explosive mixtures
• analytical chemical determination

Conflicts of interest

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

F. Zapata thanks the Spanish Ministry of Education for his Ph.D. research grant (FPU14/00790) and University of Alcalá for his postdoctoral research grant.