To meet the required burn rate of a propellant for new batch of AP has always been a time consuming and difficult task for any propellant industry. In this regard, a careful study has been carried out to explore the variation of burn rate of AP, batch to batch. The experiments were carried out at 40 ᵒ C to eliminate the dispersion in burn rate due to the day-to-day temperature variation. Particle size distribution of AP powder used to prepare the AP pellets was maintained almost same for all the batches. The burn rate of AP pellets was found to vary across the batches. A methodology has been proposed to correlate the burn rate of AP for various batches and burn rate of propellant with varying fractions of catalyst. This methodology would reduce the time for approving a given batch of AP and accelerate the overall process.
Moreover the effect of iron oxide (IO) and copper chromite (CC) of the combustion of AP were studied. The burn rates were obtained close to adiabatic combustion by reducing the convective heat loss to the surroundings with the application of silica grease on the periphery of pellets. The burn rate of pellets of AP with 1% IO and 1% CC were measured in the pressure range of 20-300 bar at initial temperatures of 30 ᵒ C and 70 ᵒ C. The temperature sensitivity of AP with 1% IO and
1% CC was also calculated in the pressure range of 20-300 bar.