Environmentally Friendly 'Green' Propellant for the Medium Caliber Training Rounds; Conference paper

摘要

U.S. Army TACOM-ARDEC has teamed with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in developing an environmentally friendly 'green' propellant with improved insensitive munitions characteristics for use in medium caliber ammunition. The propellant formulation, PAP8386, removes several toxins and carcinogens and is manufactured using a solventless process that eliminates volatile organic compounds. The material has been successfully processed by ATK under contract DAAE30-01-9-0800 TOSA 59/88 at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant on large-scale production equipment. Preliminary tests have shown vastly improved hazard sensitivity and mechanical properties relative to existing fielded propellants in the Army inventory. Initial ballistic test results are very promising. Future work to optimize the geometry to improve the ballistic performance is planned.