Comparison Of Hand And Mechanically Mixed Ap/Htpb Solid Composite Propellants

The Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (RPL) at the University of Central Florida has recently produced a lab-scale propellant mixing unit. This new method of mechanically mixing the propellant is proposed as a more realistic, safe, and efficient method of propellant production than the previous method of hand mixing. To test for verification of the mechanically produced propellant and as a verification of data repeatability, results from both methods were compared. A baseline HTPB/AP, non-metallized propellant was used. The burning rate curves from two mixtures of each mixing method were collected and compared. Collected data showed that both methods produced extremely similar burning rate curves and that the mechanical mixing method had a slightly higher correlation coefficient than hand mixing