Temperature Sensitivity of Composite Propellants Containing Novel Nano-Additive Catalysts
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abstract
Copyright 2017 by the authors. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. Recent synthesis methods developed by the authors for producing titania premixed in the binder or grown in situ produce 20-nm-sized particles homogeneously distributed within the binder. The focus of the present paper was to further demonstrate the increased effectiveness of the in situ synthesis method for titania catalysts and to assess the manufacturing, safety, and temperature sensitivity of the resulting composite propellants. Burning rate increases as high as 69% at additive mass loadings of only 0.3% were observed in nonaluminized propellants for pressures from 3.5 to 15.5 MPa. Increases in burning rate up to 73% were seen in aluminized propellants. To test the temperature sensitivity, the propellants were cooled to 245 K and heated to 360 K before testing. The results, on average, showed that the titania addition increased the temperature sensitivity of the propellant. Cook-off safety tests showed that the titania nano-additives lowered the safety margin, but by nomore than 20C at the extreme. This paper documents the authors' latest techniques for producing propellants with nanosized additives with and without aluminum and provides new burning rate results for the entire scope of additives and mixing methods, including the temperature sensitivity of the propellants containing nanotitania.
