Technical Approach

This effort will use an innovative, castable minimum-smoke propellant grain design to eliminate lead catalysts and RDX, provide insensitive munitions capability, provide high performance, and incorporate materials that reduce toxicity. EMMS uses a ballistic control propellant (BCP) to control the pressure and temperature sensitivity of a rocket motor and a matrix propellant to provide total rocket motor impulse. In this approach, the rocket motor ballistics respond almost solely on the burning rate behavior of a faster burning BCP. The BCP is only a fraction of the mass of the overall motor propellant, so it has little effect on total delivered performance. The rocket motor performance is almost solely a function of the thermochemical performance of the slower burning matrix propellant. Elimination of lead in the matrix propellant is thus also possible. Enhancement of the matrix propellant performance is desirable, and suitable RDX replacements will be evaluated. Use of an end-burning grain enhances insensitive munitions response by preventing the propellant spalling and ignition on bullet and fragment impact typical of center perforated motor configurations. End-burning grains also provide high performance by allowing high volumetric loading of the propellant in the motor case. Lastly, end-burning grains can be readily manufactured by current industrial infrastructure and are typically made in a cartridge-loaded configuration.