Milling of Nitramines for Ultraviolet (UV) Curable Energetic for Additive Manufactured Propellant Grains
Abstract
Wet stirred media milling (WSMM) is a technique widely used by industry as a top-down method for reducing the particle size of suspensions. In this study, the aim is to demonstrate the feasibility of particle size (PS) reduction of the suspended nitramines in an additive manufactured propellant formulation, in its uncured state. Traditional WSMM uses a stationary tank with a shaft and attached arms to agitate the milling media, or a built in pump, agitator, and pre-disperser for single pass or recirculation milling to achieve desired particle sizes in suspension. With this approach, a bladeless centrifugal SpeedMixer by FlackTek, Inc., Landrum, SC, was used, which employs dual asymmetrical mixing on a polypropylene cup filled with the pre-formulation and a zirconia grinding media to achieve the desired PS reduction within minutes. From this report, it is discovered that Class I RDX is significantly more challenging to achieve PS reduction when compared to HMX via this method, which the latter achieves a mean PS of about 10 m in 10 min. In addition, it is discovered the dispersed HMX is significantly less soluble in the continuous monomer phase than RDX.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1149179
Entities
People
- David T. Bird
- Joseph M. Laquidara
- Rajen Patel
Organizations
- United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center