Simple method to evaluate the ballistic properties for gas generant compositions

The study of the ballistic properties of energetic materials remains vital to ensure safety during their transportation, handling, storage, and processing. It might be a complex, expensive, and time-consuming process to evaluate the ballistic properties experimentally. This work proposes a simple numerical method to predict the ballistic properties of deflagrating energetic materials. Adiabatic and one-dimensional propagation of waves is assumed for theoretical evaluation, and the Rankine–Hugoniot equations are used to obtain correlations. The correlations are obtained in terms of the reactant mass to determine the ballistic properties, namely, the pressure, temperature, and velocity of the particle at the point of ignition. For determining the particle velocity and combustion wave velocity, theoretical correlations are also derived in terms of the mass and distance from the point of ignition. The theoretical calculation is compared and validated with experimental results. The deviation is found to be smaller than 2%. This simple calculation can be used for evaluating and comparing the ballistic properties of various deflagrating energetic materials without the need of performing complicated experiments.