Energetic Material Advanced Manufacturing

Abstract: Much of energetic material (propellants, explosives, pyrotechnics) research involves developing process-structure-property relationships. For energetic materials, the property in question is typically a performance metric, related to initiation, combustion, or detonation. These properties are tightly coupled to the structure of the energetic material, which includes easily measured metrics such as density, and more-difficult-to-measure metrics such as microstructure and porosity distribution. The process by which energetic material samples are fabricated impacts the structure-property portion of this relationship and is the topic of this paper. Historically, energetic material samples have been made by selecting constituent powders, mixing if necessary, and pressing or pouring to achieve a formulation with a given density. These processes leave much to be desired with respect to controlling the structure of a material. Novel techniques such as Physical Vapor Deposition and Additive Manufacturing allow for a greater degree of control over the micro- and meso-structure, presenting new opportunities to fabricate samples to designed to elucidate trends in explosive behavior.