CL-20 performance exceeds that of HMX and its sensitivity is moderate

The explosive performance of ϵ-CL-20 was found to be approximately 14% greater than HMX as determined by cylinder expansion and tantalum plate acceleration experiments. This makes it the most powerful explosive ever tested at small volume expansions of the detonation products. In general CL-20 is more sensitive than HMX. However, the sensitivity of CL-20 to one-dimensional shock loading was found to be similar to HMX.