Liquid Propellant

<html><title> Liquid propellant (5/21097) (John Canning; Scott Norton; Doug G wyn)</title> <a href=index.html>Index</a> <a href=../home.
html>Home</a> <a href=../about.html>About</a> <hr> <pre> From: jcannin@nswc-wo.navy.mil (John Canning) Date: Sep 8 1991 The concept of using a liquid propellant in guns is not a new one. I have worked here at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, VA - the Navy's primary gun technology laboratory for over twenty years. (Please, no comments regarding the IOWA incident. I wasn't involved in that affair, and couldn't comment on it even if I wanted to, which I don't.) I know that research work on liquid gun propellants has been going on for about as long as I've been here, maybe longer. There have been a number of programs, but none has panned out to date. Since hope springs eternal, there is still work going on, but I won't comment on them either for a number of reasons - not the least of which is that I've got a wife, three kids, and a dog that look to me to keep them clothed (The dog wears a sweater in snow.) housed, and fed, and the government has a lien on certain sensitive portions of my anatomy regarding breaches in security. I WOULD like to comment on some general concepts regarding gun internal ballistics and how they relate to liquid propellants, and relate to you my own personal experience with one such program from a long time ago. I can talk about this one because it was my project (not by choice), and because it was never classified. First, the internal ballistics concepts: Normal gun propellants for large bore guns are produced in propellant grains. These grains are fairly good size, measuring about half an inch in diameter and about an inch or so in length. (Hey, big guns means big grains!) Consider a solid propellant grain and the way it burns. For all intents and purposes you can assume that when a gun is fired, a particular grain will begin to burn everywhere on its exterior surface simultaneously. Overall burn rate is a function of the particular propellant, breech pressure, and the exposed surface area that is burning. As the propellant begins to burn, the pressure behind the projectile continues to rise until the projectile begins to move. When the projectile begins to move, the volume in the breech increases. When the volume increases, the pressure in the breech tends to drop. Well, at least it doesn't rise as fast as it did before the projectile started to move. Anyway, the point here is that projectile motion will adversely affect breech pressure because breech volume keeps increasing. This, in turn, causes a drop in burn rate, or at least adversely affects the acceleration of burn rate. At the same time as this is going on, the surface area of the propellant grain (Remember our solid propellant grain?) is also decreasing because it is being burned away, exposing more propellant, which also burns away, making it even smaller, ... ad infinauseum. The net result is that propellant gas is generated at much slower rates than you'd like and the projectile doesn't come out as fast as you'd like. This does not mean that you can
stand in front of a gun and thumb your nose at the gunner. What you really want to have happen is to have the pressure behind the projectile rise as continuously and as smoothly as it can. One way to help do this is to use what is called a perforated propellant grain. These things look like strange hamburger helper noodles. Instead of a single hole, or "perforation", through the center, they have a bunch. Seven- and nine-perf propellants have been used. The idea here is that when they begin to burn all over, "all over" includes the insides of the perforations too. So, while the outside burning surface is getting smaller, the inside burning surface is getting bigger. If the propellant type, grain design, gun, and projectile are all properly matched you get a smoothly rising pressure as the projectile moves down the barrel, but not for the entire length of the barrel. ("What does all of this have to do with liquid propellants?", you ask. Be patient, I'm getting to that.) Now, consider the size and shape of pistol powder. A lot of it looks like ground pepper. (An exaggeration, but bear with me.) What do you think would happen if you were to use it as the propellant for a large bore gun? It has a LARGE total initial area to set on fire. Remember that burn rate is a function of this surface area. (Click! The brain lights come on!!) The initial burn rate would be so high it would cause the pressure to spike behind the projectile before it can move, which would raise the burn rate, which would spike the pressure further, which would.....BANG!!!! As the smoke clears, we find the remains of a gun mount scattered hither, thither, and yon around the countryside. Now, here's where the part about liquid propellants comes in. Solid propellants are just that - solid. You can predict what the surface area exposed to burning is as a function of time with them. You can't do this as well with liquid propellants because they slosh around and change their exposed surface shapes and amounts - even while burning. The people that continue to experiment with these propellants play statistical games in this regard. I'm not saying that they'll never get there, but I am saying that they've got their work cut out for them - and they continue to blow up gun mounts. Also, one of the biggest variables in gun accuracy at range is muzzle velocity. They will need a VERY predictable burning rate in order to properly control muzzle velocity. I wish them well because there are some significant logistics benefits that could be had from such a system, but I'm not holding my breath. Now, I promised to tell you about a liquid propellant program that I was personally involved in. A looooong time ago we had a member of "Upper Management" who isn't here anymore. (Matter of fact, I'm not sure he's anywhere anymore - he may have died by this time.) This individual thought it would be a good idea if Navy ships wouldn't have to load propellant charges when they re-stocked, but could just strike down projectiles into the magazines. His idea was that we ought to be able to manufacture our own propellant from the sea. After all, he reasoned that water is made from hydrogen and oxygen, and you can burn those, so we ought to be able to figure out a way to use this to our
benefit. Thus was born the Hydrogen-Oxygen Gun Program, or the HOG Program as we called it. (I swear that I'm not making this up. I still have the design folder with all my material in it.) I thought it was a dumb idea from the beginning, but I was the duty stuckee. Well, you can imagine the ribbing I took at the hands of my co-workers. I think I heard every "pig" joke that was ever dreamed up. Anyway, I ran into a number of design problems that singly and collectively killed the program. Thank God! I was beginning to hate the sight of bacon. For starters, seawater has salt as one of its components. This guy's idea was to electrolyze seawater to produce the required hydrogen and oxygen and then to liquefy it to get the necessary energy density. Wrong! You get hydrogen and chlorine when you electrolyze seawater. A nasty combination in anybody's book. "Well, how about we only keep the hydrogen and get the oxygen from liquefying air? After all, we do this all the time onboard carriers to supply pilots while they're flying." I had to hand it to this guy, he got an "A" for inventiveness. I began to look at this avenue. It began to look like we could actually do it, so I started to look at gun designs to handle it. This was where I got to research liquid propellants. One BIG difference in this setup over everyone else - we were working at cryogenic temperatures. I ran into the "exploding gun" phenomenon during some early testing that we did using just high pressure gaseous hydrogen and oxygen in a closed bomb that we were using to try to establish burning rates vs pressure curves. Fortunately, it was a small, thick walled bomb (for safety reasons) and all we did was destroy the pressure gage that was screwed into the side. The downside was that it went off before we were ready for it. The ordnance men had just finished hooking everything up and were exiting the test chamber. I was right behind them when we all heard a very loud click. We thought something had dropped off the test rig. Our instrumentation man reported that the pressure gage had gone haywire and asked us to check it. We bled the pressure off the bomb and backed the pressure gage out. It fell apart in our hands and looked like someone had hit it with a sledge hammer! The click had been the test mixture detonating. We found out later during our investigation that one of the ordnance men had used a rag with some oil or grease on it to clean out the bomb between test runs. Petroleum products and high pressure oxygen don't mix! This presents a serious problem for shipboard operations, particularly for a space like a gun mount. If high pressure oxygen and petroleum products are a safety problem, then cryogenic oxygen presents a nightmare! Turns out that when petroleum products get chilled to cryogenic temperatures, they become shock sensitive. Fire departments get real nervous when they hear they've have a truck accident involving liquid oxygen on paved roads. Don't even think of throwing a rock toward the wreck, let alone walking over to it! (Not sure who'd be that stupid, but you never know!) Cryogenic hydrogen is no better. As I recall, DoT safety regs state that this material is dangerous if left in a confined
space - and they defined a confined space as "three" walls. Remember the Hindenburg. In order to avoid instant detonation of the propelling charge, it was obvious that we couldn't have the entire charge inside the breech at the same time. We began to investigate ways of continuously injecting the charge for the length of the burn. Sliding seals at these temperatures were a problem, as was the overall injection mechanism design. Lastly, we found that the steel that guns are normally made of becomes brittle at cryogenic temperatures, not well suited to the kinds of shock loading you would expect from gun firings. So we also found material problems. The research funding ran out and the results looked so negative that it was decided not to renew the effort. As much of a pain it had been, it had been a real learning experience for a young engineer. I look back on this experience with mixed emotions. I don't work guns anymore, haven't for over ten years. My comments here are based on my past experience, and don't reflect any official opinion of the Center. Just thought you ought to know. John S. Canning Combat Systems Engineer Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, VA </pre> <hr> <pre> Subject: Re: Liquid Propellant? From: norton@ACM.ORG (Scott Norton) Date: Jan 05 1996 Newsgroups: sci.military.moderated In our discussion of Liquid Propellant (LP) for artillery, there are both general discussions (using a variety of liquid propellants) and discussion specific to the US Army's Crusader (formerly AFAS) gun. Crusader's LP is a monopropellant, premixed. It contains HAN (hydroxyl ammonium nitrate) and HES (can't recall what that stands for) in water. It is nonflammable, and passes the Army's insensitive munitions (IM) safety criteria. It will only react when under pressure. It is about as acid as lemon juice, and as poisonous as asprin. Its biggest problems are that it gets more sensitive if contaminated by iron ions, and for it to pass the all the IM tests, the tank geometry is constrained. So it can't just be kept in a fuel tanker or "water buffalo" type of container, but one designed to prevent build-up of high pressure. The big advantages of LP are in the logistics area:
- It can be replenished by pumping, so the resupply operation goes quicker. - It is truly incremental. While current field artillery fires different increments, unused bags are not used again. If you fire only a single increment, the remaining charges are just tossed out. A disadvantage of the LP design used in the Crusader is its regeneratively pumped piston approach. To get this incremental capability, and to avoid high peak pressures, the fuel is metered into the combustion chamber, pumped by the chamber pressure acting on a piston at the back of the chamber. If things go correctly, the piston pumps LP into the combustion chamber faster than it combusts. But if the piston hangs up or if the seals leak, the combustion can proceed into the fuel reservoir, causing a "pressure reversal." This can destroy the gun. (Note: the combustion goes back into the as-yet-uninjected fuel, not into the storage tank.) This problem is a design problem--once solved, it should not be a problem in fielded systems. There are a few ways in which the theoretical advantages of LP get diluted by practical considerations. For example, because the HAN-HES LP contains a substatial percentage of water, its volumetric energy density is less than a good solid propellant. Although the tank-stored LP packs more efficiently than granular solids in increments, the solid is more energy-dense. Also, the piston is a big mechanism, and its size and weight may be too great a price to pay. Still, the Army is spending big bucks on LP. Some of the difficulties are fixable in design, and the advantages remain even if they are diluted. And the equivilent solid-propellent technology is no cake walk, either. New systems are held to very high standards for IM, safety, enviromental cleanliness, and performance. Current solvent-based granular propelling charges produce a big waste stream when manufactured and when demilitarized, have trouble meeting IM requirements, and require lots of work by the gunners to use. Crusader is looking to be more like a naval gun, with a smaller crew, an autoloader, and a high rate of fire. LP would be a big help. For comparison, not that Otto fuel, used in torpedoes, is also a liquid monopropellant. While the Army LP is somewhat difficult, by comparison to Otto Fuel, Army LP is grape juice. Otto fuel is downright evil. -Scott Norton Norton@ACM.org Defense Technology, Inc. 2361 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Suite 500 Arlington VA 22202-3876 (703) 415-0200, fax: (703) 415-0206 </pre> <hr> <pre>
Subject: Re: Liquid Propellant? From: norton@ACM.ORG (Scott Norton) Date: Jan 23 1996 Newsgroups: sci.military.moderated In my previous post concerning Liquid Propellant, I said that was HES. It is, in fact, TEAN. Again, I'm posting away from sources, so I can't recall what TEAN stands for exactly. The either tri or tetra; the E is either ethyl or ethanol; the AN ammonium nitrate. -Scott Norton Norton@ACM.org Defense Technology, Inc. 2361 Jefferson Davis Hwy, Suite 500 Arlington VA 22202-3876 (703) 415-0200, fax: (703) 415-0206 </pre> <hr> <pre> Subject: Re: AFAS - liquid vs solid propellant From: norton@ACM.ORG (Scott Norton) Date: Mar 24 1996 Newsgroups: sci.military.moderated In article <DMq62B.GC1@ranger.daytonoh.attgis.com> "LEYTE C" <A7QA@unb. ca> writes: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > A recent article in Jane's Defence Weekly (24 Jan 1996) brought up an issue that is dividing the US Army in relation to AFAS artillery system development. While the project has been thus far concentrating on the development of liquid propellant, there may be a decision to revert to the less risky solid propellant technology. Proponents of the solid propellant system cite its proven technology and increased work for Army depots, while the liquid propellant camp says the new technology is vital to gaining the advantages in range and firepower sought by AFAS. I would tend to agree with the latter argument. Isn't the whole goal of the AFAS/Crusader programme to develop a tube artillery system that can outrange the enemy (with efficiency) ? My personal opinion about these types of decisions is that if you are going to spend all that money on a new weapon intended to serve for quite some time to come, you might as well go with the latest feasible technology. Besides, if a decision is made to revert to solid propellants now, it will be necessary to redesign many key components of the AFAS/Crusader system. Any opinions or thoughts on the issue of solid vs liquid propellant for AFAS ? the fuel my T is is
Liquid propellent would be really good, but the current design is not without its own tradeoffs. First, there have been some problems in development of the gun's regenerative pumping system. It is critically important that the seals not leak, or the supply part of the system will ignite and blow up.
Second, the regenerative piston is a big hunk of metal. About as big as a 16 in gun's breech plug. Finally, the bulk storage advantages of the current HAN-TEAN monopropellant are diluted somewhat if you want to meet insensitive munitions criteria. You can't have too large a volume, or you'll get a high-order reaction to some of the tests, like shaped charge impact. Instead of one big tank, you have to go to a series of pipes, like a car's radiator. Some general explanation for those who don't know what AFAS is, or why liquid propellant is being discussed. AFAS, now called Crusader, is the US Army's Advanced Field Artillery System, an autoloading, self propelled 155 mm howitzer. It will have a matched support vehicle for rapid rearming as well. One of its goals is to get a simultaeous time-on-target by shooting three rounds on three different trajectories. The first gets a small charge and a high trajectory, and the following rounds get large charges and flatter trajectories. They all hit at once, increasing the lethality since the troops don't have time to fall prone or crawl into holes. For both logistic and performance reasons, the Army would like to use a liquid propellant for Crusader, rather than the granualar, bagged powder they use in other 155 mm guns. Liquid propellent is easier to resupply (you pump it like diesel fuel), it packs more efficiently into tanks and drums, it fills the chamber with no void spaces giving greater energy density, and it can be used incrementally, with only as much propellent as needed for the range. (When a howitzer fires less than a full charge, it doesn't save the powder for the next mission. The bags have different grain sizes, and you can't throw the tail ends into another shot. Instead the unused propellent is discarded, burned, or reclaimed at a recycling plant.) Liquid propellent can also be injected in a precisely metered rate, to help make the pressure profile less spiky and more flat-topped. This gives more muzzle velocity for a specific pressure limit. In solids, this behavior is controlled by the grain geometry. The specific propellent developed for Crusader is a mixture of HAN (hydroxyl ammonium nitrate) and TEAN (tri-ethanol ammonium nitrate) in water. HAN is the oxidizer, and TEAN is the fuel. The water makes it very insensitive to fast and slow cookoff, bullet impact, and fragments. It reacts only when under pressure. The problem with just filling up the breech with liquid is that the pressure shoots up to a peak exponentially. To produce a nice, long, flat-topped pressure profile, the propellent must be metered into the chamber through the ballistic cycle. Crusader has developed a regenerative injector, where chamber pressure pushes a piston, which forces more propellent into the chamber. -Scott Norton Norton@ACM.org Defense Technology, Inc. 2920 South Glebe Road Arlington VA 22206 +1-703-299-1656, fax: +1-703-706-0476
</pre> <hr> <pre> From: gwyn@arl.mil (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: rec.guns Subject: Re: [TECHNICAL] Binary Liquid Propellants Date: 31 Jan 1997 18:45:03 -0500 In article <Pine.SUN.3.95.970128075224.17760A-100000@Isis.MsState.Edu> Jam es H Galt-brown <jhg3@Ra.MsState.Edu> writes: # The U.S. military has been working on a binary liquid propellant #system for some years now. Indeed, two APG/Edgewood scientists received awards for the practical development of binary liquid propellant systems. Later on they were sacrificed by their own management for local PR purposes, for the environmental "crime" of flushing acid down laboratory drains, which of course was standard chemical lab practice at the time they did it. </pre> <hr> <a href=index.html>Index</a> </html>

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