• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.730-736
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• 2015

Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (RDX) is a high explosive commonly used for military applications. Submicronization of RDX particles has been a critical issue in order to alleviate the unintended and accidental stimuli toward safer and more powerful performances. The purpose of this study is to optimize experimental variables for drowning-out crystallization applied to produce submicron RDX particles. Effects of RDX concentration, anti-solvent temperature and anti-solvent mass were analyzed by the central composite rotatable design. The adjusted determination coefficient of regression model was calculated to be 0.9984 having the p-value less than 0.01. Response surface plots based on the central composite rotatable design determined the optimum conditions such as RDX concentration of 3 wt%, anti-solvent temperature of $0.2^{\circ}C$ and anti-solvent mass of 266 g. The optimum and experimental diameters of RDX particles were measured to be $0.53{\mu}m$ and $0.53{\mu}m$, respectively. The regression model satisfactorily predicts the average diameter of RDX particles prepared by drowning-out crystallization. Structure of RDX crystals was found to be ${\alpha}$-form by X-ray diffraction analysis and FT-IR spectroscopy.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.418-424
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• 2015

The chemical response of energetic materials is analyzed in terms of 1) the thermal decomposition under the thermal stimulus and 2) the reactive flow upon the mechanical impact, both of which give rise to an exothermic thermal runaway or an explosion. The present study aims at building a set of chemical kinetics that can precisely model both thermal and impact initiation of a heavily aluminized cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine (RDX) which contains 35% of aluminum. For a thermal decomposition model, the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement is used together with the Friedman isoconversional method for defining the frequency factor and activation energy in the form of Arrhenius rate law that are extracted from the evolution of product mass fraction. As for modelling the impact response, a series of unconfined rate stick data are used to construct the size effect curve which represents the relationship between detonation velocity and inverse radius of the sample. For validation of the modeled results, a cook-off test and a pressure chamber test are used to compare the predicted chemical response of the aluminized RDX that is either thermally or mechanically loaded.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.46-55
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• 2016

The kinetic analysis of a heavily aluminized cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine(RDX) is conducted using differential scanning calorimetry(DSC), and the Friedman isoconversional method is applied to the DSC experimental data. The pre-exponential factor and activation energy are extracted as a function of the product mass fraction. The extracted kinetic scheme does not assume multiple chemical steps to describe the complex response of energetic materials; instead, a set of multiple Arrhenius factors is constructed based on the local progress of the exothermic reaction. The resulting reaction kinetic scheme is applied to two thermal decomposition tests for validating the reactive flow response of a heavily aluminized RDX. The results support applicability of the present model to practical thermal explosion systems.