Influences of the Random Stacking and Charge's Diameter on Compression and Fracture Process of Propellant Charge.

After decades of unremitting research on the launch safety of propellant charge at home and abroad, it is gradually recognized that the fractured propellant charge generated by the compression process of propellant particles is the leading cause of chamber explosion. The large numbers of particles in propellant charge inevitably bring out the complexity in describing the fracture process under impact load in description. The discrete element method is applied to study the influences of the random stacking configurations of propellant charge and the charge diameter on the compression and fracture process of propellant charge in this paper. The results show that the random stacking of propellant bed influences little on the fracture process under the same impact load. When the diameter of propellant charge is larger than a certain value, the charge's diameter has little influence on the fracture process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]