Thermal decomposition properties and compatibility of CL-20, NTO with silicone rubber

Abstract

The new polycyclic nitramine 2,4,6,8,10,12-hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (HNIW) has been focused as a considerable amount of research recently on investigating its polymorphs, relative stability, and respective reaction chemistry. It is known as CL-20 popularly, CL-20 is a very high-energy and relatively high oxygen balance value crystalline compound whose method of synthesis and detailed performance data are still classified. 5-oxo-3-nitro-1,2,4-triazole (NTO, or nitrotriazolone) was an insensitive molecule comparison general explosives, and the NTO based polymer bonded explosives (PBX) was a low vulnerability explosive. Both energetic materials are all very important high explosives, which is used in a variety of military formulations widely owing to the properties of high energy and desensitization of PBX, many researchers have demonstrated the usefulness of above two energetic materials in explosive component. In this work, the thermal decomposition characteristics of explosives CL-20 and NTO were studied using thermal analytical techniques (TG, DSC), then the compatibility of above two explosives with silicone rubber, and the decomposition kinetic parameters such as activation energies of decomposition, the frequency factor of the decompose reaction are also evaluated by non-isothermal DSC techniques.