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Updated: May 26, 2026

Research and Development of High-performance Explosives
Published on: February 20, 2016
The physics, chemistry and dynamics of explosions
Elaine S Oran1, Forman A Williams
1Laboratories for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics, US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA. oran@lcp.nrl.navy.mil
Abstract:
The motivation for devoting a Theme Issue to explosions is discussed. As subsequent articles in the issue are written with the assumption that the reader has had a certain amount of previous exposure to the subject, some of the history and necessary background information are presented here. The topics on explosions that will be encountered in the remaining articles are previewed. Finally, several important future outstanding research problems, beyond those addressed in the following articles, are discussed, with the objective of complementing the coverage of explosions in this issue.
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