Abstract
The mechanical properties of Composite solid propellant (CSP) are the critical material parameters to analyze the structural integrity of propellant grains, and have a significant influence on the life and reliability of solid rocket motors. A Voronoi cell finite element method using an adaptive algorithm in the time domain is proposed for investigating the linear viscoelasticity of CSP in the present paper. A process is brought forward to produce a Representative volume element (RVE) model, which reflects the microstructural features of CSP. Numerical viscoelastic examples are used for varying the accuracy of this method. In addition, finite element simulations are conducted to understand the effect of microstructural morphology and material properties of inclusion on the effective mechanical properties of CSP using the new method. When this method is applied to the design process of CSP, it can reduce the design cost and shorten the design cycle effectively. The current microscopic numerical analysis method can be used to provide guidance for designing and analyzing the mechanical properties of composite viscoelastic materials.
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Recommended by Associate Editor Kyeongsik Woo
Liu-Lei Shen received his B.S. degree from National University of Defense and Technology (NUDT) in 2014. And he is currently a Ph.D candidate at the college of Aerospace Science and Engineering, NUDT. His research interests the cross-scale analysis of particles reinforced materials.
Zhi-Bin Shen received his Ph.D. at National University of Defense and Technology (NUDT) in 2012 and now he is an Associate Professor in NUDT. His research interests are mechanical properties of viscoelastic material, finite element analysis, etc.
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Shen, LL., Shen, ZB., Li, HY. et al. A Voronoi cell finite element method for estimating effective mechanical properties of composite solid propellants. J Mech Sci Technol 31, 5377–5385 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-1032-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-1032-1