Effects of Carbon Materials as Additives on the Combustion Behavior of Double-Base Propellant
Open Access
- Author:
- Schirtzinger, Skylar Carl
- Graduate Program:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- April 06, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Dr. Richard Yetter, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
- Keywords:
- graphene
functionalized graphene sheets
combustion
double base propellant
thermal decomposition
burning rate
controlled enhancment
scanning electron microscope
propellant additive
thermal stability
graphite - Abstract:
- Carbon materials such as graphite, graphene and functionalized graphene sheets have been shown to have enhanced effects on the burning/combustion of propellants. The increased availability of specialized carbon materials leads to greater interest in understanding how these materials affect propellant performance. In this investigation, five types of carbon materials (graphite, graphene, graphene oxide (GO), reduced graphene oxide (rGO), and carboxyl functionalized graphene sheets) were mixed with the double-base propellant (~58% NC, 40% NG) at concentrations of 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, and 1.00wt%. The effects of these additive materials and concentrations on the propellant properties, including burning rate, density and thermal decomposition were observed. A lab-scale procedure was established to produce the propellant material in the form of solid strands, which allowed for control of sample composition and testing. Propellant samples were characterized using optical strand burning measurements, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). It is shown that 0.50wt% GOb exhibits statistically significant increase (approximately 1.19 times) in linear burning rate compared to the control double-base propellant with no additive. Normalizing the linear burning rate data by density for a mass burning rate revealed that 0.50wt% and 1.00wt% rGO exhibit statistically significant increase (approximately 1.11 and 1.14 time, respectively) in gas production compared to the control. The 0.75wt% and 1.00wt% graphite propellant mixtures exhibit statistically significant decrease (approximately 0.89 and 0.87 times, respectively) in the rate of gas production compared to the control. DSC-TGA data indicates that the additive materials used do not lead to more sensitive or less thermally stable propellant admixtures. Evaluation of the TGA data does indicate that 0.50wt% rGO exhibit enhanced thermal decomposition and heat release compared to the baseline propellant. Graphene oxide, at a concentration of 0.50wt%, consistently exhibits enhancements to the combustion behavior of the base propellant. The results achieved in this investigation show that, overall, inexpensive, commercially available, carbon additives can be used as a controllable variable to tailor the performance of a double-base propellant to obtain desired characteristics.