Preparation and Characterization of Porous Propellants by Template Leaching with PAAK

Porous propellants have garnered considerable interest due to their rapid burning characteristics. To prepare propellants with a high gas generation rate, the template leaching method was employed to create porous gun propellants, utilizing low molecular weight potassium polyacrylate (PAAK) as a pore-forming agent. PAAK was kneaded with nitrocellulose (NC) to produce 7-perforated gun propellants, which were subsequently immersed in water to obtain the porous structure. The pore structure and combustion behavior of the porous propellants were analyzed with varying PAAK additions. The morphology of the porous propellants was observed by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Pore diameter, pore volume, pore area, and their distributions were characterized through mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP). Additionally, a closed vessel test was conducted to investigate the combustion performance. The results indicate that different pore sizes significantly affect the combustion performance of the porous propellant, with pores smaller than 0.1 μm and larger than 1 μm exhibiting markedly different combustion performance gains. Furthermore, the porous propellants prepared with PAAK demonstrated a higher combustion gas generation rate, with a burning time t _m of only 1.40 ms.