Thermal decomposition and combustion behavior of solid propellant containing Si-based composites

In this work, Si@NC/AP and Si@PVDF/CL-20 composites with different Si contents have been fabricated by spray-drying technique. The flame structure, ignition delay time and combustion process have been investigated. It has been shown that the ignition delay of Si-based fuel with 40 wt% of Si is the shortest. This means that oxygen balance and the catalytic effect of Si on the energetic composites are playing a dominant role during the combustion processes of these composites. The solid composite propellants (SCP, named as SCP-1 and SCP-2) contains two typical Si-based composites Si-80@NC/AP and Si-80@PVDF/CL20 have been prepared for propellant applications. Their propellants containing the corresponding mechanical mixtures (named as SCP-3 and SCP-4) have been fabricated as a comparison. It has been observed that the cross sections of propellants containing Si-based composites are denser than that of the reference propellants. The burn rate of SCP-1 (with Si-80@NC/AP) and SCP-2 (with Si-80@PVDF/CL-20) are 5.74 and 5.10 mm s -1 at 2.0 MPa, respectively, which are lower than those of the reference samples SCP3 (6.51 mm s -1 ) and SCP-4 (5.70 mm s -1 ). However, the pressure exponent of former is slightly lower than that of the latter. Moreover, the combustion products (CCPs) of SCP-1 and SCP-3 are more fluffy and smaller in particles size than those of SCP-2 and SCP-4. This indicates that the core-shell structured composites have much better combustion performances due to better heat and mass transfer between the oxidizers and Si as fuel. (c) 2021 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Si@NC/AP and Si@PVDF/CL-20 composites with different Si contents were fabricated by spray-drying technique. Their flame structure, ignition delay time, and combustion process were investigated. The results showed that the Si-based fuel with 40 wt% of Si had the shortest ignition delay time. The core-shell structured composites exhibited better combustion performance with lower burn rate and slightly lower pressure exponent, as well as more fluffy combustion products.