Much Research on composite solid propellants has been performed over the past few decades and much progress has been made, yet many of the fundamental processes are still unknown, and the development of new propellants remains highly empirical. Ways to enhance the performance of solid propellants for rocket and other applications continue to be explored experimentally, including the effects of various additives and the impact of fuel and oxidizer particle sizes on burning behavior. One established method to measure the burning rate of composite propellant mixtures in a controlled laboratory setting is to use a constant-volume pressure vessel, or strand burner. To provide high-pressure burn rate data at pressures up to 360 atm, the authors have installed, characterized and improved a strand burner facility at the University of Central Florida. Details on the facility and its improvements, the measurement procedures, and the data reduction and interpretation are presented. Two common HTPB/AP propellant mixtures were tested in the original strand burner. The resulting burn rates were compared to data from the literature with good agreement, thus validating the facility and related test techniques, the data acquisition, data reduction and interpretation. After more than 380 successful recordings, an upgraded version of the strand burner, was added to the facility. The details of Strand Burner II, its improvements over Strand Burner I, and its characterization study are presented.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-4108 |
| Date | 01 January 2007 |
| Creators | Carro, Rodolphe Valentin |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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