Experimental studies on the burning of coated and uncoated micro and nano-sized aluminium particles

Two different approaches are used in this work to reduce the burning times of aluminium particles with the ultimate goal to improve the performances of solid propellants. One method is to coat the micro-sized particles by nickel, and the second is to decrease the particle sizes to nano-metric scales. A thin coating of Ni on the surface of Al particles can prevent their agglomeration and at the same time facilitates their ignition, thus increasing the efficiency of aluminized propellants. In this work, ignition and burning of single Ni-coated Al particles are investigated using an electrodynamic levitation setup and laser heating of the particles. The levitation experiments are used to measure the particle ignition delay time and burning time at different Ni contents in the particles. Decreasing the size of Al particles increases their specific surface, and hence decreases the burning time of the same mass of particles. In this investigation, a cloud of Al nano-particles formed in a combustion tube is ignited by an electric spark. The cloud experiments are used to measure comparative flame front propagation velocities for different Al particle sizes with and without organic coating. The results and their analysis show that both methods reduce the Al burning time. Ni coating reduces significantly the ignition time of microsized Al particles and hence the total burning time compared to non-coated particles. Nano-sized particle clouds burn faster than micro-sized Al particle clouds. (c) 2006 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.