Investigation of the Effect of Ammonium Oxalate/Strontium Carbonate on the Burning Rate Temperature Sensitivity of Solid Composite Propellants

In this study, the effect of additives such as ammonium oxalate (AO), mixture of ammonium oxalate and strontium carbonate (SC) on AP/HTPB based composite propellants was investigated by burning rate, DTA, density and autoignition temperature measurements. The results show that the burning rates of these propellants are decreased significantly. DTA and autoignition temperature experiments results indicate respectively that the decomposition and autoignition temperatures of AP with these additives are increased. The burning rate temperature sensitivity of AP/HTPB based propellants is reduced significantly by the addition of AO or AO/SC, but the effect of AO is less than that of AO/SC. The reduced heat released at the burning surface of AP/HTPB/AO is responsible for the reduced temperature sensitivity. Synergetic effect between AO and SC at AP/HTPB/SC/AO based propellants causes the reduction of heat release and augmentation of the burning surface temperature. Thus, the burning rate temperature sensitivity is reduced. The results of this research in comparison with other results showed that the temperature sensitivity of the propellant formulation with 4% AO was lowered up to 4.8%.