Application of rapid screening device test to evaluate thermal stability of gun propellant

摘要

The Rapid Screening Device (RSD) has never been employed to determine thermal decomposition kinetics of energetic materials. In this paper, the thermal degradation energy (E_a) of two simple base gun propellants was investigated. One of the investigated propellants is naturally older than the second but both have similar initial chemical composition. The value of the activation energy was evaluated by applying both Kissinger and Ozawa methods from RSD results. Assessing the thermal decomposition kinetics of propellants by RSD tests is an added value to the range of thermal analysis tests if the results of these tests can be well correlated to the results of existing thermal analysis technique. Therefore, a comparison was made and the decomposition energies of both investigated propellants were determined by DSC test. A correspondence has been observed between all the thermal analysis methods employed in this study. In fact, RSD and DSC results show that the older investigated propellant has lower activation energy.