Preparation and Characterization of Polyurethane/Nitrocellulose Blends as Binder for Composite Solid Propellants

Abstract

Polyurethane (PU) elastomers are largely used in the field of high-energy composites such as composite solid propellants (CSPs) and high-energy polymer-bonded explosives (PBXs) due to their distinguished characteristics. Conventional PU binders are mostly non-energetic materials, and consequently reduce the energy performance significantly. Nitrocellulose (NC), is an energetic polymer widely used as an ingredient in propellants, explosives, fireworks, and gas generators, may be introduced in PUbased compositions to overcome their performance drawback. In this context, PU/NC polymer blends at different mass ratios were prepared in the present work using hydroxyl-terminated polyester prepolymer (Desmophen® 1200) and nitrocellulose (NC) by solution blending process. The physico-chemical structure of the prepared PU/NC polymer composites were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and density measurements. The thermal decomposition behavior was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Based on the obtained DSC results, the Arrhenius parameters were computed by different isoconversional kinetic approaches, namely, iterative Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (It-KAS), iterative Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (It-FWO) and Vyazovkin's nonlinear integral method coupled with compensation effect (VYA/CE). Additionally, in order to highlight the influence of the introduction of the NC to the binder composition on the performance of a composite propellant, the theoretical performances, namely, theoretical specific impulse, the adiabatic flame temperature, as well as the ideal exhaust gaseous species were determined based on NASA Lewis Code, Chemical Equilibrium with Application (CEA).

Study of the preparation and properties of polyvinyl chloride/nitrocellulose polymer blends

“…Touidjine et al . prepared polyurethane/NC blends and further proved their suitable application as solid propellants 19 . With this motivation, we selected NC for polymer blending with the PVC system.…”

Energetic bimetallic complexes as catalysts affect the thermal decomposition of ammonium perchlorate

“…For energetic materials with gasphase products, TG/FTIR technologies are used to synchronously analyze the gas produced in the decomposition process, so as to explain the decomposition mechanism and the relationship between components. [37][38][39] Therefore, DSC and TG-FTIR techniques were used to analyze the effect of BMEP-1 and BMEP-2 on the thermal decomposition behavior of AP. The results showed that BMEP-1 and BMEP-2 were two heatresistant and insensitive energetic complexes with excellent catalytic effects on the thermal decomposition of AP.…”

Effect of copper ferrite (CuFe2O4) in the thermal decomposition of modified nitrotriazolone

“…However, research has been carried out to increase the thermal decomposition performance of NTO by use of additives such as metal oxides that form co-crystals with other HEMs such as HNTO/AN, preparing nanosized particles of HEMs, and the use of polymers coordinated with graphene oxide (GO)-functionalized catalysts that can directly impart a great influence in the burning and combustion performance of chemical propulsion systems. [29][30][31][32][33][34][35] To gain increased insight into the effect of the nano-size of catalysts, the synthesis and properties of various catalysts such as metal oxides, 23 metals, 24 ferrites, 25 and mixed metal ferrites 26 have been deeply studied to mainly ascertain how they affect the thermal decomposition of NTO. These are helpful to identify ferrite synthesis that can occur on a laboratory scale, with low cost and reproducible processes, and does not require specialized equipment systems.…”

“…In this study, the synthesis, characterization, and thermal decomposition of NTO and nNTO with and without catalyst metal ferrite CuFe 2 O 4 are briefly discussed, of which very little work has been previously reported. [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] 2. Experimental…”