Aging Effect Prediction of Energetic Materials Using Isoconversional Technique

The decomposition process of typical energetic material (EM) may consist of thousands of individual reactions as well as many intermediate species. However, one-step decomposition kinetics is routinely utilized for prediction of the shelf life of EMs. The inclusion of detailed multi-step chemistry in the kinetic mechanism can improve the reliability of the lifetime prediction. This study proposes a novel procedure for lifetime prediction of EMs, which adopts isoconversional kinetics to represent the decomposition reaction scheme. The pertinent EMs considered in the study include 97.5% cyclotrimethylene-trnitramine (RDX), 95% cyclotetramethylene-tetranitramine (HMX), and boron potassium nitrate (BPN). Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was utilized for extracting the said isoconversional kinetics complemented by experimental validation of the proposed chemical kinetics through a comparison of the numerical lifetime predictions with accelerated aging experiment measurements.