Correlations of Uncertainties of Composite Propellant Strand Burner Burning Rate Measurement for Quality Control

Abstract

AbstractThis study acquired, classified, and analyzed more than 3500 repeated‐measured steady state strand burner burning rate data from our quality control data bank as well as from open literature. The large size of consistent data from our resource were employed for the construction of a model that correlates burning rate standard deviations with average burning rates for both within‐batch lots and among‐batch lots. An increase in standard deviations with burning rates was observed for both correlations. Both correlations exhibit an R2‐statistic larger than 0.82 within burning rate range of 3.4–38.6 mm s−1, and both correlations provide predictions in good agreements with some good quality published data. These two correlations may serve as feasible burning rate standard deviation tolerance reference when conducting composite propellants production quality control or burning rate data reproducibility checkup. Moreover, the confidence limits of parameters from the derived within‐batch correlation equation allow assessing the maximum pressure‐exponent uncertainties within selected burning rate range, thus provide insightful considerations to pressure‐exponent tolerance assignment for propellants under development or production.