Composite solid propellant processing

A form of cooling, and the one of prime interest, concerns ablative cooling. It is essentially a heat and mass transfer process in which mass is expended to achieve thermal dissipation, absorption, and blocking. The process is passive in nature, serves to control the surface temperature, and greatly restricts the flow of heat into the material substrate. As a result of these desirable attributes, ablative cooling (includes use of plastic compositions) has been widely used for thermal protection of solid propellant motors and less extensively in liquid propellant motors. 

This expression denotes a modern processing technique in the field of rockets driven by solid propellants. The pourable Composite Pro-... 

The basic approach taken in the analytical studies of composite-propellant combustion represents a modification of the studies of double-base propellants. For composite propellants, it has been assumed that the solid fuel and solid oxidizer decompose at the solid surface to yield gaseous fuel and oxidizing species. These gaseous species then intermix and react in the gas phase to yield the final products of combustion and to establish the flame temperature. Part of the gas-phase heat release is then transferred back to the solid phase to sustain the decomposition processes. The temperature profile is assumed to be similar to the situation associated with double-base combustion, and, in this sense, combustion is identical in the two different types of propellants. 

A third alternative has been proposed by Anderson and Brown (A6, A9) as an outgrowth of their research on the ignition of composite propellants. Their ignition studies suggest significant contributions to the overall combustion process from the solid phase. Two exothermic reaction zones contributing to combustion are considered, as shown schematically in Fig. 19. 

Powling (P7) recently reported on the results of an extensive study of the combustion characteristics of ammonium perchlorate-based composite propellants. The nature of the chemical processes taking place at the solid-gas interface and the possibility of heat release in the condensed phase were considered. Although the evidence is that some heat release is likely to occur within the solid surface, Powling found that the combustion in all pressure regions appears to be dominated by gas-phase reactions. 

The unusual sensitivity of some composite-modified double-phase propellants before curing has justified intensive effort to exploit a nonmechanical mixing process. First introduced in about 1959 as the quick-mix process by Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation (5, 10), the inert diluent process has been developed at the Naval Ordnance Station, Indian Head, Md. for application to a variety of propellant compositions. Separate streams of solids, slurried in heptane, and an emulsion of plasticizers in heptane, are combined in a non-mechanical mixing chamber. The complete propellant slurry is allowed to settle, and the heptane is separated and recycled in a continuous operation. Figure 1... 

The solids content of propellants ranges between 70 and 90%. The higher limit is dictated by processability. Propellants with less than 70% solids are rare since the specific impulse of such combinations is unduly low. Ammonium perchlorate is the preferred oxidizer and takes the largest percentage in the composition. For special formulations ammonium nitrate or other oxidizing agents may be encountered. Aluminum powder is the most frequently used additive to boost specific impulse and may be found in quantities up to 25%. 

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