Experimental Study of Fragmentation of Hybrid Rocket Fuel

Abstract

For the first step of investigating TNT equivalency, blasting tests without igniting to fuel samples in the air atmosphere were carried out in order to investigate the fragmentation characteristic of the fuel blocks. PP, PMMA and FT-0070 blocks were blasted by No.6 electric detonator or No.6 electric detonator + P-4. As a result, it is revealed that the blocks are fragmented into smaller particles if the original block size is smaller and if the power of the high explosives is higher. However, the effect of power of the high explosives is small in the case of this study. It is revealed that PP is not fragmented so small, FT-0070 is fragmented to powder and the fragmented particles size of PMMA is between PP and FT-0070.