This work comprehensively reviews some fundamental concepts about explosives and their two commonly used classifications based on either their velocity of detonation or their application. These classifications are highly useful in the military/legal field, but completely useless for the chemical determination of explosives. Because of this reason, a classification of explosives based on their chemical composition is comprehensively revised, discussed and updated. This classification seeks to merge those dispersed chemical classifications of explosives found in literature into a unique general classification, which might be useful for every researcher dealing with the analytical chemical identification of explosives. In the knowledge of the chemical composition of explosives, the most adequate analytical techniques to determine them are finally discussed.
Keywords: Classification of explosives; analytical chemical determination; chemical classification; individual explosive molecules; oxidizer-fuel explosive mixtures.