STABILIZER COMPARISON FOR SINGLE BASE PROPELLANT FORMULATIONS

摘要

Generally, gun propellants are required to last twenty years in a controlled storage environment and two years in an uncontrolled storage environment. Three batches of propellant were made using different stabilizers. Each of the batches was stabilized with Ethyl Centralite (EC), Akardit II (AKII) or Diphenylamine (DPA). An accelerated aging experiment was conducted in order to provide reaction kinetic data for evaluating the stability of each formulation. The stabilizer concentration data was obtained using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) on samples periodically withdrawn from an accelerated aging experiment. The data were used to develop reaction kinetic models in order to predict the lifetime of each formulation under controlled and uncontrolled storage conditions. The reaction kinetic models were used to assess the stabilizers and their ability to provide resistance to degradation for each formulation. The stabilizers were ranked by estimating the propellant lifetimes in controlled and uncontrolled storage environments.