Detonation temperature of CaHbNcOd explosives can be predicted from a, b, c, d and calculated gas phase heat of formation of explosives without using any assumed detonation products and experimental data. Two new correlations are introduced for calculation of detonation temperature of aromatic and non-aromatic explosive compounds so that it is shown here how simply calculated heat of formation by additivity rule and atomic composition are only necessary data for this simple prediction. Calculated detonation temperatures by the introduced correlations for both pure and explosive formulations show good agreement with respect to measured detonation temperatures and complicated computer codes. The average mean absolute error in detonation temperature is within about 7.0%. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.