Monday  |  Executive CD  |  05:00 PM–05:20 PM

#19782, Effect of Thermal and Mechanical Fatigue Loading on the Performance of Energetic Materials

Energetic materials widely used in defense and civilian applications are complex material systems incorporating binders, crystals, and other additives. Their failure mechanisms are complex and depend on many parameters, such as initial porosity, temperature, and loading rate. During service and transportation, the temperature and mechanical loading fluctuation can initiate and accumulate damage and degreed the material's mechanical strength. The effect of fatigue damage on the performance of energetic material needs to be better understood. This required understanding how the damage is accumulated in this material under different temperatures and loading conditions. We propose a digital image correlation-based experiment to understand the mechanical and thermal fatigue damage accumulation in polymer-bonded energetic materials. We used polymer-bonded sugar as a surrogate sample and subjected it to controlled fatigue and thermal loading. The microstructures of the sample before and after loading at different loading and thermal cycles are documented and used to study the damage accumulation. The virgin and damaged specimens are further exposed to high-strain loading, and their failure mechanism as a function of damage is also investigated. This experimentation will be combined with first-principles physics-based multi-scale modeling to establish load-structure-damage-performance linkages for pressed and plastic-bonded energetic materials.

Addis Kidane   Columbia University
Georgios Gavris   Columbia University
Suraj Ravindran   University of Minnesota
Waiching Sun   Columbia University