Preparation, Properties and Performance of Gelled Propellants for Aerospace Propulsion

Abstract

The research in the aeronautical field takes up the increase of safety an performance and tries to optimize the costs. In particular, an interesting and new alternative to solid and liquid propellants could be the gel. The application of such materials would have many advantages: because of quasi-solid behavior, propellantspills are much reduced in case of accident; moreover, the development of hazardous vapors is limited by the reduction in vapor pressure caused by the formation of crusts on the scattered material. The rheological properties of gels lead to reduce slosh in propellant tanks.