• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
• /
• v.14 no.6
• /
• pp.31-37
• /
• 2010

This study was carried out to investigate the thermal decomposition and execute EIDS slow cook-off test for the propellant ingredients and 2 kinds of HTPE propellants. The thermal analysis of the propellant ingredients used in this study showed that the thermal stability of these materials decreases in the following order : AP > HTPE > AN > BuNENA. In addition, propellant HTPE 002 containing AN showed that an endothermic process at around $125^{\circ}C$ corresponding to the solid phase change(II$\rightarrow$I) of AN was followed by the exothermic process of BuNENA/AN mixture up to $200^{\circ}C$. In EIDS slow cook-off tests, HTPE 001 and HTPE 002 reacted at around $250^{\circ}C$ and $152^{\circ}C$ respectively, and both of them showed sudden temperature increase curves at $115^{\circ}C$. The critical temperatures, $T_c$, of thermal explosion for the propellants HTPE 001 and HTPE 002, were obtained from both the non-isothermal curves at various heating rates and Semenov's thermal explosion theory. Kissinger's method that was used to calculate $T_c$ was also employed to obtain the activation energies for thermal decompositions.