Development of ADN-Based Minimum Smoke Propellants

Abstract

urrent minimum smoke double-base propellants used in tactical missiles contains lead compounds, such as lead resorcylate and lead maleate, to obtain the desired ballistic properties. Exposure to lead is associated with a number of acute and chronic health effects, even at very low levels. The US Department of Defense (DoD) organized workshop on advanced strategy for environmentally sustainable energetics identified lead compounds used in propellants as one of the key environmental safety and occupational health issues . Hence the DoD’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) have stated a need to develop new environmentally benign, insensitive, castable, high-performance, minimum smoke rocket propellant formulations . The formulations must meet all of the performance requirements associated with current minimum smoke, doublebase propellants, but must not contain lead compounds, ammonium perchlorate or RDX. There has been considerable efforts to develop such a propellant and many different energetic materials have been studied . One of the most promising energetic material for this application is ammonium dinitramide (ADN). This paper presents some of the properties of ADN and the ongoing work in Sweden to develop a minimum smoke composite propellant based on ADN and glycidyl azide polymer (GAP).