Authors:

Ellen Ma

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About Paper:

The current method of manufacturing molding powder for polymer-bonded explosives (PBXs) involves suspending energetic particles in agitated water and mixing in the dissolved binder before evaporating out the solvent. Unfortunately, this process comes with notable drawbacks, including the long processing times, use of toxic solvents, and the limited number of specialized binder suppliers. Previous work made alternative molding powders using partially cured hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) as a binder, and mixed it directly with a sugar surrogate to make PBXs. However, there have been issues with inconsistent curing rates and short storage times, and isocyanates are still generally considered toxic. A UV curable binder allows for fine control of curing rates at short time scales and some mixtures can be safer than isocyanates. This research aims to characterize the compressive properties of pressed PBX samples made with a UV curable molding powder based on a difunctional aliphatic polyester urethane acrylate. This study compares sample density and compressive strength across different UV cure times to assess the sample quality. The densities of the samples are measured using the Archimedes method and the samples are subjected to compression testing to collect their stress-strain curves. Based on the processing conditions, the compressive properties and densities could easily be tuned for specific applications. Given the right conditions, samples with sufficient densities and compressive strengths were made, indicating that this method of manufacturing molding powder for PBXs is a promising alternative to the traditional solvent-based method. Keywords: Compression Test; UV Curable Binder; Molding Powder; Polymer-Bonded Explosive; Plastic- Bonded Explosive

Source:

Purdue University / 2024

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Co-authors:

Ellen Ma