Active Learning for Generalizable Detonation Performance Prediction of Energetic Materials

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ullberg, R. Seaton, Davis, Megan C., Schroeder, Jeremy N., Salij, Andrew H., Cawkwell, M. J., Snyder, Christopher J., Kort-Kamp, Wilton J. M., Matanovic, Ivana
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Ullberg, R. Seaton
Davis, Megan C.
Schroeder, Jeremy N.
Salij, Andrew H.
Cawkwell, M. J.
Snyder, Christopher J.
Kort-Kamp, Wilton J. M.
Matanovic, Ivana
author_facet Ullberg, R. Seaton
Davis, Megan C.
Schroeder, Jeremy N.
Salij, Andrew H.
Cawkwell, M. J.
Snyder, Christopher J.
Kort-Kamp, Wilton J. M.
Matanovic, Ivana
contents The discovery of new energetic materials is critical for advancing technologies from defense to private industry. However, experimental approaches remain slow and expensive while computational alternatives require accurate material property inputs that are often costly to obtain, limiting their ability to efficiently predict detonation performance across a vast chemical space. We address this challenge through an active learning strategy that integrates density functional theory calculations, thermochemical modeling, message-passing neural networks, and Bayesian optimization. The resulting high-throughput workflow iteratively expands the training dataset by selecting new molecules in a targeted manner that balances the exploration of broad chemical space with the exploitation of promising high-performing candidates. This approach yields the largest publicly available database of potential CHNO explosives drawn from an initial pool of more than 70 billion candidates and a generalizable surrogate model capable of accurately predicting detonation performance (R$^2$ > 0.98). Feature importance analysis on this largest-to-date dataset reveals that oxygen balance is the dominant driver of detonation performance, complemented by contributions from local electronic structure, density, and the presence of specific functional groups. Cheminformatics analysis highlights how energetic materials with similar performance metrics tend to cluster in distinct chemical spaces offering a clearer direction for future synthesis studies. Together, the surrogate model, database, and resulting chemical insights provide a valuable foundation for high-throughput screening and targeted discovery of new energetic materials spanning diverse and previously unexplored regions of chemical space.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_08744
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Active Learning for Generalizable Detonation Performance Prediction of Energetic Materials
Ullberg, R. Seaton
Davis, Megan C.
Schroeder, Jeremy N.
Salij, Andrew H.
Cawkwell, M. J.
Snyder, Christopher J.
Kort-Kamp, Wilton J. M.
Matanovic, Ivana
Chemical Physics
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Computational Physics
The discovery of new energetic materials is critical for advancing technologies from defense to private industry. However, experimental approaches remain slow and expensive while computational alternatives require accurate material property inputs that are often costly to obtain, limiting their ability to efficiently predict detonation performance across a vast chemical space. We address this challenge through an active learning strategy that integrates density functional theory calculations, thermochemical modeling, message-passing neural networks, and Bayesian optimization. The resulting high-throughput workflow iteratively expands the training dataset by selecting new molecules in a targeted manner that balances the exploration of broad chemical space with the exploitation of promising high-performing candidates. This approach yields the largest publicly available database of potential CHNO explosives drawn from an initial pool of more than 70 billion candidates and a generalizable surrogate model capable of accurately predicting detonation performance (R$^2$ > 0.98). Feature importance analysis on this largest-to-date dataset reveals that oxygen balance is the dominant driver of detonation performance, complemented by contributions from local electronic structure, density, and the presence of specific functional groups. Cheminformatics analysis highlights how energetic materials with similar performance metrics tend to cluster in distinct chemical spaces offering a clearer direction for future synthesis studies. Together, the surrogate model, database, and resulting chemical insights provide a valuable foundation for high-throughput screening and targeted discovery of new energetic materials spanning diverse and previously unexplored regions of chemical space.
title Active Learning for Generalizable Detonation Performance Prediction of Energetic Materials
topic Chemical Physics
Materials Science
Machine Learning
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08744