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Science and Technology of Energetic Materials

Vol.64, No.4 (2003)

Research paper

Estimation of highest burning rate of AP/HTPB composite propellant with experimental approach (I)
- Burning rate characteristics of AP/HTPB composite propellant -
Makoto Kohga and Yutaka Hagihara
p.153-160

Abstract

The burning rate is one of the important properties of the propellant. The upper limit content of AP incorporated in AP/HTPB composite propellant, φmax exists because of the requirements for the preparation of propellant. The burning rate increases with increasing the AP content and the burning rate of the propellant prepared at φmax, rφ is the highest value of the propellant prepared with AP used as an oxidizer. It is necessary for the design of AP/HTPB composite propellant to estimate rφ. This paper is one of a series of the study to develop the estimation of rφ with the experimental approach.

A lot of propellants were prepared with many kinds of AP samples, e.g. spherical AP, porous AP, hollow AP, narrow distribution, wide distribution, monomodal, bimodal, etc., and the burning rate characteristics of the propellants were investigated. The φmax of the propellant prepared in this study is in the range of 72 to 85 wt% AP. And the range of rφ at 7 MPa is 11.7 - 25.2 mm·s- 1. The increment of burning rate increases remarkably with coming close to φmax. The increasing ratio of the burning rate upon the AP content increases with increasing specific surface area less than 500 m2·kg- 1, and is the maximum and almost constant above that. The increasing ratio of the burning rate upon the specific surface area increases linearly with the AP content. The burning rate would be changed greatly by the slight variation of the specific surface area at the higher AP content.

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