Designing Timers for Grenades
Background
Throughout the military chemical timers are used to set device off in a controlled manner. Those devices include grenades, hand-held signals and others. Chemical timers are energetic materials that combust in a controlled manner and given a certain length it will take a known amount of time to combust. We want to replace the current chemical timers with ones that are more friendly to the environment and eliminate perchlorates and chromates from them. However, we don't know whether these mixtures will work in the housings that are used. Modeling the reactions in the housings can answer that question without having to do extensive number of experiments.
Project Details
Mathematical models (COMSOL, FLEXPDE) will be used to predict the combustion velocities and failure conditions for the reactive materials of interest. These models will incorporate the heat transfer, mass transfer, and chemical kinetics. Computations will be carried out using COMSOL or FLEXPDE. The data that is generated will be used to guide new experiments and gather additional data that can be fed into the model to make it more accurate. An example of computed extent of reaction for a sample geometry is shown below. An example of the small scale combustion experiments that will be modeled is shown below.
Skills Development
- Basic understanding of combustion of energetic materials
- Basic understanding of conduction and reaction kinetics
- FEM modeling
- Validating models with experimental data
- Gain familiarity with high speed cinemetography
- Familiar with physical and chemical properties measurments
Research Duties
The student will build and input experimental values into 2-D mathematical model, use the model to predict combustion velocities for different chemical timer housing materials (e.g., Al, Stainless steel) and geometries, write research reports, provide model input for experimental development, and also validate model with experiments being conducted in the laboratory.
Impact of Research
The impact of this research is a game changer for the US military and of significant impact to the environment. We currently do not have any environmentally friendly chemical time delay compositions and there is no model that would quickly allow us to assess whether the compositions would work in the device of interest. If we develop a valid model this would reduce the number of experiments that have to be conducted. There are more than a million chemical timers manufactured in the US every year.
Research Team
You will be working with both Dr. Lori Groven and Dr. Rajesh Shende.
Dr. Groven has expertise in both experiments and modeling energetic material systems. This person will serve as the lead on the project.
Dr. Shende has experience in modeling combustion and highly exothermic reactive systems. They will provide modeling support for the project.
For more details on this project, contact the lead investigator:
Dr. Lori Groven
lori.groven@sdsmt.edu
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