Papers presented at a Symposium held in Athens, Greece. 10-14 May 1996. – 498 р.Solid propellant systems for rockets, gas generators and guns are designed to function within narrow performance boundaries after an increasingly extended shelf life. In order to guarantee these performances we must be able to predict and extend their life cycle, as well as determine their residual life span after the system has been subject to handling and storage under varying conditions which are not always recorded. This type of approach would also improve system reliability, as well as safety and cost.
Service life assessment begins in the development phase and monitoring programs must be developed and implemented during the life span of the system. The complexity of the operational cycles makes this a very difficult task. A full understanding of the technical field known as “Service Life” is therefore essential and the AGARD PEP Panel considered that it was important to look at all aspects of the question during the course of a Symposium.
This symposium brought together more than 160 people from different backgrounds (industry, government departments, scientific bodies, etc...), all concerned at different levels by weapon system service life problems. A total of 43 papers were presented out of the 46 announced. The high level of the participants, the quality of the presentations and the interest of the discussions all combined to make this a highly successful symposium.
All aspects of service life issues for both solid rocket motor and gun propellant systems were addressed, including chemical and physical aging mechanisms, methodology and techniques for determining service life, application of the service life methodology and techniques to systems and non-destructive test methods.
Advances highlighted during the Symposium, both for solid propellant systems and gun propellants, included:
— demonstration of the importance of environmental conditions;
— test methods used on in-service or prototype mock-up motors;
— improved chemical and physical analysis methods;
— better simulation of the stabilizer consumption mechanism;
— improvement of stress measurement in motors;
— improved mechanical codes;
— improvement of fault probability analysis methodologies.
These advances will help to improve the design of solid propellant systems for rockets and guns under optimum conditions of safety, reliability and cost. They will also enable the definition of handling and storage procedures aimed at longer service life for these propellant systems.
