Effect of Temperature and Thickness on Fracture Toughness of Solid Propellant

A cracked solid propellant would have failure or fracture of rocket because of excessive combustion according to increase of burning area, therefore it is important to evaluate the fracture toughness of solid propellant. A procedure is used to investigate the material under a range of test temperatures between -60 degrees C and 60 degrees C, three kind of specimen thickness, 4, 12.5 and 24.5 mm to determine the effect of two parameters on the fracture toughness. A center cracked tension (CCT) specimen is used in these tests, which were conducted using INSTRON 5567 testing machine and environmental chamber to evaluate the fracture toughness. The experimental results show that the fracture toughness tends to decreases with an increase in the temperature, and the effect of thickness indicates that the fracture toughness is highest at 12.5 mm under various temperatures except -60 degrees C. It is found that the fracture toughness of solid propellant is changed due to glass transition behavior around -60 degrees C.