Effect of diverse factors on combustion rate of energetic compositions based on ammonium nitrate for airbags

The ammonium nitrate is the most promising oxidizing agent in the developing of the gas generating compositions for the automobile airbags inflation. Providing the necessary gas generation rate is an important research task of the composites design. In present work, we studied the burning rate of mixtures of high molecular compounds in stoichiometric ratio with ammonium nitrate. Some polymers based on epoxy resins, polyurethanes, polytetrazoles etc. were used as combustible binder. It was found that high dispersed technical carbon is the most preferably activator of the combustion process. The ammonium nitrate material was additionally modified by special treatment in organic solvent, resulting in a porous structure of the particles. The burning rate of composites was measured in a constant pressure bomb, using the two thermocouples method, and in a manometric bomb in the pressure range 20 - 400 atm. Most of the studied composites demonstrated burning rates from 4 to 10 mm/sec at the composite density about 1.5 g/cu.cm and relative porosity of - 10%. A significant increasing of the burning rate (up to 30-100 mm/sec) was reached at the specially designed agglutinated material with high porosity corresponding to poured mixture of raw components. The low detonation sensitivity of the studied composites was observed during the standard tests. For the covering abstract see ITRD E127621.