Predicting detonation

Calculating the properties of crystals
For more than a decade, Warren Perger has collaborated with a team of researchers at MIT and Washington State University to understand how deformations in crystals ultimately lead to the initiation of a shock and, consequently, a detonation. Researchers at Washington State are performing IR, Raman, and optical absorption studies of energetic crystals; MIT is performing femto-second resolution experiments of the shock-to-detonation transition; and Perger is developing theoretical predictions for these phenomena. READ MORE