Meso-scale deformation behavior of polymer bonded energetic material under quasi-static compression

Abstract

This paper describes the meso scale deformation behavior of polymer bonded energetic materials under quasistatic compression. Polymer bonded energetic material contains 80-90% of sugar crystals (as simulant of HMX) and 10-20% of hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) and plasticizer are cold pressed using a mold made of stainless steel. Meso and macro scale experiments are conducted to understand the multi-scale deformation mechanisms under uniaxial compression. Specimen with different amount of solid loading has been tested under compression and the crack nucleation in the case of high solid volume fraction and low volume fractions are studied. The displacement and strain fields of the specimen in all cases are measured using in-situ high resolution optical microscope and digital image correlation.