A Study on the Effect of Initial Temperature on Combustion Characteristics of RDX Based on the Optical Diagnosis Methods

The purpose of this work is to investigate the effect of different initial temperatures on the combustion characteristics of RDX materials. In the experiments, the electric heating plate below the RDX samples was controlled so that the initial temperatures were set to be 298, 323, 373, 423, and 473 K (below the material melting point), respectively. Three optical diagnostic methods were employed to capture the ignition process, flame thermal radiation, and NO distribution in the flame at different conditions. The results show that the increase in initial temperature can improve the reaction rate, shorten the ignition delay time, and increase the flame combustion intensity and speed, because of the earlier evaporation and pyrolysis process in the RDX samples. Increasing the initial temperature also enhances the thermal effect of the flame, which is related to the generation and consumption of NO to a certain extent.