Clean, Agile Processing Technology.

Abstract : This contract was part of the Clean, Agile Manufacturing of Explosives (CAME) program managed by ONR and funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). The overall goal of CAME was to enable a 90% reduction in pollution from the Nation's propellants, explosives, and pyrotechnics (PEP) life cycle. Major elements of CAME designed to address the pollution reduction goal were the reduction or elimination of manufacturing scrap and the development of recycle and/or recovery methods for PEP materials. The CAME effort at Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space (LMMS) focused on a selected process with the alm of understanding how the physical/chemical behavior of a plastic-bonded explosive (PBX) in the process affects the scrap and pollution generated by the process. Specifically, LMMS utilized rheology and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the flow of suspensions to model PBX injection loading operations developed at Naval Surface Weapons Center-Indian Head Division (NSWC) for BLU-97 submunitions. We examining how suspensions flow through the injection loader geometry and helped identify process conditions that lead to undesirable scrap or defective submunitions. In this manner, the LMMS project addressed the primary CAME goal of pollution reduction through inherently cleaner processes. This LMMS effort was closely aligned with related programs at other sites involved in the SERDP-sponsored research on the processing science of energetic materials. These groups included the NSWC, Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Sandia National Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology (CIT), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC), China Lake.