Burning of Metallized Composite Solid Rocket Propellants: from Micrometric to Nanometric Aluminum Size

A survey is offered of the present status of microaluminized propellants industrially used worldwide in most space applications, but new directions are also pointed out making profitable use of the nanoaluminized propellants currently tested in many laboratories. Different industrial- and research-type of solid rocket propellants, mainly but not only, of the well-known family oxidizer/Al/HTPB(oxidizer being AP, AN or a mixture of the two) were experimentally analyzed at the Space Propulsion Laboratory of Politecnico di Milano. In general, they feature the same nominal composition but implement different grain size distributions of the oxidizer or metal fuel. The basic properties of all formulations were compared to that of a standard propellant already certified for flight.