Energetic materials pyrolants

Propellants, explosives, and pyrolants are all energetic materials designed to have maximum energy density within a limited domain of mechanical sensitivities, manufacturing requirements, physical properties, and combustion characteristics. 

The pressure generated by the combustion of metallized pyrolants is sometimes lower than that generated by the combustion of non-metallized energetic materials. 

The energetic materials used as propellants, explosives, and pyrolants have distinct physicochemical properties. The burning pressure in the relevant combustion chamber ranges from 0.1 MPa to 20 MPa for rockets and from 10 MPa to 5000 MPa... 

When a metallized energetic material is burned as a propellant igniter in a rocket chamber, a consequence of the aforementioned production of metal oxides as hot condensed particles is that there is very tittle associated pressure increase. However, the surface of the propellant grain in the chamber is ignited by the hot particles and a stable burning pressure is established. Typical metallized pyrolants used as igniters are shown in Table 11.1. 

HMX and RDX are energetic materials that produce high-temperature combustion products at about 3000 K. If one assumes that the combustion products at high temperature are HjO, Nj, and CO, rather than COj, both nitramines are considered to be stoichiometricaUy balanced materials and no excess oxidizer or fuel fragments are formed. When HMX or RDX particles are mixed with a polymeric hydrocarbon, a nitramine pyrolant is formed. Each nitramine particle is surrounded by the polymer and hence the physical structure is heterogeneous, similar to that of an AP composite pyrolant... 

The specific impulse of each pyrolant is computed as a function of air-to-fuel ratio, as shown in Fig. 15.7. In the computations, the pressure in the ramburner is assumed to be 0.6 MPa at Mach number 2.0for a sea-level flight When GAP pyrolant is used as a gas-generating pyrolant, the specific impulse is approximately 800 s at e = 10. It is evident that AP pyrolant and NP pyrolant are not favorable for use as gas-generating pyrolants in VFDR. However, the specific impulse and burning rate characteristics of these pyrolants are further improved by the addition of energetic materials and burning rate modifiers. 

As described in Sections 4.2.4.1 and 5.2.2, GAP is a unique energetic material that burns very rapidly without any oxidation reaction. When the azide bond is cleaved to produce nitrogen gas, a significant amount of heat is released by the thermal decomposition. Glycidyl azide prepolymer is polymerized with HMDI to form GAP copolymer, which is crosslinked with TMP. The physicochemical properties of the GAP pyrolants used in VFDR are shown in Table 15.3.PI The major fuel components are H2, GO, and G(g), which are combustible fragments when mixed with air in the ramburner. The remaining products consist mainly of Nj with minor amounts of GOj and HjO. 

Bunte, G., Pontius, H. and Kaiser, M. (1999). Analytical characterization of impurities in new energetic materials. PropelL Explos. PyroL, 24, 149-55. [282]... 

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