Stressed Explosive

Defect-free crystals can endure tensile strains which are just below those needed to break all the interatomic bonds in the material. (Most materials have defects which act as stress concentrators, meaning the material will break well below this level of strain.) As a result, when such crystals break in tension, they often disintegrate into microscopic particles, since the stored strain energy was almost enough to break every [longitudinal] bond in the crystal.

As a result of this, the strain energy in a highly-strained crystal can be roughly equivalent to its chemical energy.

It follows, then, that a highly-strained crystal of an explosive will release significantly more energy when detonated than an unstrained crystal. In other words, its explosive yield will be significantly (maybe 10-30% higher) if it is pre-stressed.

(As an aside, many explosives are already stressed at the molecular level, since they contain rings of atoms that can't adopt their preferred bond angles.)

How, though, to make pre-stressed explosives that can be easily handled? Well, one way would be to make long-chain polymeric explosives and encapsulate them in very fine glass capillaries. In fact, the ideal would be to have an explosive that can survive glass-melting temperatures (which can be quite low, with the right sort of glass), and to draw out fibres consisting of a thin glass skin with an explosive core. If the explosive polymer melts at a different temperature to the glass, then a lot of strain will be built into it as the fibre cools, due to differential contraction of the glass and the explosive. Once cooled, the fibres could be compacted, woven or otherwise formed into suitable shapes.