CHARACTERIZATION OF THE VARIATION OF REMAINING EFFECTIVE STABILIZER IN AN ASSEMBLY OF PROPELLANT INCREMENTS

A stabilizer compound is included in chemical propellant formulations to reduce autocatalytic reactions and prolong the useful life. The depletion of stabilizer is a function of propellant bed geometry, temperature, and time. The consumption of propellant stabilizer is a conjugate phase reaction. Stabilizer volatilizes from the solid and reacts in the gas phase. The volatilization is a function of temperature and at higher temperatures the partial pressure of stabilizer in the headspace is greater. In a more complex propellant solution, the propellant is packaged in several different parts and in different geometries. This presents a potential problem in determining the remaining effective stabilizer by sampling. Sampling can skew results to indicate that there is more stabilizer content remaining in the case where a volume with less exposure to high temperature is chosen or to indicate that less stabilizer remains in the case where a volume with more severe exposure is chosen. The desired results would indicate the average remaining stabilizer content over the entire volume of propellant. This work presents the characterization of the consumption of propellant stabilizer for a complex propellant assembly with multiple discrete increments of packaged propellant. This work extends a previously published numerical representation of the consumption of propellant stabilizer. This work expands the state-of-the-art by characterizing propellant stabilizer consumption differences in similar discrete propellant increments assembled together.