Thermal and mechanical stability of rocket and gun propellants are very important properties with regard to safety during storage and handling and to the interior ballistics behavior during combustion.
However, our knowledge of how these properties are connected is poor. In order to better understand the aging behavior of double base propellants, the following properties were measured between 60 °C and 90 °C: the depletion of the stabilizers, the degradation of the molecular weights of nitrocellulose and the decrease of the mechanical properties (tensile strength and strain at break).
The evaluation of the kinetic parameters of the different aging processes mentioned has shown that stabilizer depletion, molecular weight degradation of nitrocellulose and decrease of mechanical properties must be closely connected.