Search

The preparation and energy release mechanism of catalyst-coated RDX: (A), diagram of preparation of catalyst-coated RDX based CPs; (B), Dependence of the burning rates (r, mm·s−1) on initial chamber pressures (P, 1–3 MPa) in Ar atmosphere under ambient initial temperature; (C), Flame temperature and burning time at 2 MPa for different CPs. [Display omitted] • High energy density and insensitive qy-RDX hybrid crystals is prepared. • The in-situ synthesis and coating of metal oxides as catalysts on qy-RDX results in greatly improved catalytic efficiency. • The pressure exponent of composite propellants was reduced by 50% by using only 10 wt% of catalyst-coated qy-RDX. High-energy solid propellants with lower pressure exponent, lower burn rate but with high combustion efficiency are usually desired. The use of catalysts in less amount but maintained high efficiency is essential for high-energy content and better combustion performances. The fine combination of catalyst with energetic fillers as oxidizer has been found to be a promising strategy to achieve this goal. In this paper, a widely used nitramine oxidizer, cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX) has been selected as a typical example, which was first intercalated for lower sensitivity and lower burn rate, and then it was coated with in-situ synthesized nanosized metal oxides as catalysts for lower pressure exponent using polydopamine as the interfacial binding layer. Two types of catalyst-coated hybrid RDX crystals (named as qy-RDX@Fe 2 O 3 and qy-RDX@CuO) have been prepared and characterized. It is found that the in-situ grafted nano-Fe 2 O 3 and CuO crystals have significant catalytic effect on qy-RDX, which increased the heat release of qy-RDX@Fe 2 O 3 and qy-RDX@CuO from 1747 J·g−1 to 2159 J·g−1 and 2133 J·g−1, respectively. The results show that both qy-RDX@Fe 2 O 3 and qy-RDX@CuO could reduce the ignition delay time and largely improve the burn rate of corresponding propellants at lower pressure (e.g. increased from 3.14 mm·s−1 to 5.50 mm·s−1 at 1 MPa) by coating only 0.13 wt% Fe 2 O 3 and 0.15 wt% CuO catalysts, resulting in much lower pressure exponent (from 0.32 to 0.15). In particular, the decomposition heat of propellant containing only 10 wt% of qy-RDX@CuO is 1.5 times higher than the reference blank sample, so that its flame temperature was increased from 1800 °C to 2400 °C due to higher combustion efficiency with more energy release. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Composite propellants (CPs) containing insensitive high-energy qy-HMX have been prepared. • The qy-HMX-based CPs has 9.64% higher heat of explosion than HMX-based one. • The burn rate of CPs containing qy-HMX is 4.38 mm·s−1 at 3 MPa, 45.9% lower than that of corresponding HMX-based one. • The average particle size of the CCPs of qy-HMX-based CPs is 71.5% lower than that of HMX-based one. Two types of qy-HMX (insensitive HMX with improved energy density, numbered 1 and 2) have been used and studied as an ingredient of HTPB-based composite propellants (CPs), and the decomposition and combustion performances have been investigated. It has been shown that the main exothermic peak temperature of blank CPs containing 21 wt% of qy-HMX-1 is 258.9 °C, which is 4.7 °C higher than that of HMX-containing one, indicating improved thermostability. The corresponding heat of explosion for blank qy-HMX-2-based CPs was measured to be 5830 J∙g−1, which is 300 J∙g−1 higher than that of HMX-based one. Interestingly, the qy-HMX-2-based CPs has higher energy density than corresponding CL-20-based ones, but it has much lower burn rate under the same pressure, e.g. 4.38 mm∙s−1 at 3 MPa for the former vs. 9.03 mm∙s−1 for the latter. Under the effect of typical conventional catalysts such as nano-CuO and nano-Fe 2 O 3 , the qy-HMX-1-based CPs showed increased heat of explosion and higher burn rate. In addition, the particle sizes of condensed combustion products (CCPs) of CPs containing qy-HMX-2 are much smaller than that of HMX-based one, where the Al 4 C 3 was produced as its unique CCPs ingredient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]