CSAR Seminar

SPEAKER: Steven F. Son, Los Alamos National Laboratory

TITLE: Some Examples of Advanced Energetic Material Combustion

DATE: Wednesday, February 22, 2006
TIME: 12:00 Noon
PLACE: 2240 DCL
1304 W. Springfield Ave., Urbana, IL

ABSTRACT

The advanced Energetic Materials (EMs) effort at Los Alamos has two major thrust areas: Metastable Intermolecular Composites (MICs) and High Nitrogen Materials (HiNs). Applications of traditional composite energetic materials have been limited because of slow diffusion controlled energy release rate, even though energy can be higher than classical EMs. Nanoscale composite energetic materials (or MICs) can potentially "change the rules" by producing dramatically increased reaction rates with a tunable energy release rate. Applications include green (lead-free) primers, igniters, and microenergetics (microactuators, thrusters, heat generation, etc.). HiNs utilize a nitrogen backbone instead of carbon in classical EMs. This dramatically changes the combustion of these EMs compared to classical materials because of the exothermic decomposition of these materials in contrast to oxidation reactions. Applications of these materials include microthrusters, microactuators, propellant burn rate modifiers, and as a pyrotechnic ingredient. An additional use of HiN metal complexes is to generate ultra-low density, high-surface area metal foams. Nanostructured metal monolithic foams have been formed by a novel combustion synthesis approach having remarkably low densities (0.011 g/cm3) and the highest surface areas obtained for metals (258 m2/g). In this talk I will present a limited overview with specific examples of some of my recent work on the combustion of advanced energetic materials.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Steven F. Son received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently a Technical Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was a J. R. Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos from 1993 to 1996. He has studied the combustion of energetic materials for fifteen years, and has given numerous invited lectures at several research institutions and at meetings of the Material Research Society (MRS), American Physical Society (APS), International Pyrotechnics Seminar, and Gordon Research Conferences. Steve is currently an Associate Editor of the AIAA's Journal of Propulsion and Power. He is currently working at Penn State on a one-year sabbatical teaching a special topics course on the combustion of energetic materials and doing research.