Novel Oxidizer for Ammonium Perchlorate Replacement

The DoD requires an increase in performance and density of solid propellants for use on boost, strategic and tactical missile systems. Attaining ingredients with higher energy and density while simultaneously maintaining satisfactory physical properties is extremely challenging. Current low-cost oxidizer ingredients such as Ammonium Perchlorate (AP) are incapable of imparting the desired performance and insensitivity. Focused efforts are needed to identify, synthesize, and characterize new ingredient oxidizers that can be produced commercially at low-cost while meeting required attributes such as hazard classification, lifetime, cost, and performance. This proposed effort, lead by Nalas Engineering in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Flanagan Research, focuses on synthesis, characterization, and testing of a novel caged nitramine coined Aurora to determine its viability as a propellant ingredient. In addition to the evaluation of Aurora, Nalas proposes revisiting existing oxidizers using cocrystallization technology. Thus Nalas proposes to synthesize and investigate cocrystals in propellant formulations.