In this work, a new simple method is presented to estimate crystal density of three important classes of explosives including nitroalphatics, nitrate esters and nitramines. This method allows reliable prediction of detonation performance for the above compounds. It uses a new general correlation containing important explosive parameters such as the number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and two other structural parameters. The predicted results are compared to the results of best available methods for different family of energetic compounds. This method is also tested for various explosives with complex molecular structures. it is shown that the predicted results are more reliable with respect to the best well-developed simple methods. (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V.