摘要:
Gunpowder is an ancient multipurpose invention from 9$^{th}$ century in China. The chemical composition and physical structure of gunpowder have been developed for centuries to fulfill many purposes which lead into the development of smokeless powder or propellants. Knowledge about the chemistry surrounding propellant is vastly studied and known but precise study of the interior structure of individual propellant grains are lacking. This study validates X-ray microtomography as a method to analyse the inner physical structures of propellant grains from 18 different batches. I measured two grains from each batch. My focus of interest was on interior material domain identification, their sizes, porosity, pore sizes and the correlation of these with the recipe of the propellant. To aid my analysis I used a Python script and batch specific recipes for almost all of the batches provided by Nammo Vihtavuori Oy. Particles identified from the images are nitrocellulose, potassium bitartrate, potassium sulfate, surface finishing compound and two metals: tin and bismuth. Identified components do not change their original grain like shape while inside propellant and their size is also preserved. However, variations inside the batches are high, resulting in different sized particles and pores in varying locations for each grain. Potassium nitrate salt had the only notable correlation to the inner structure of propellant grains: the more there was salt the higher the porosity and thinner the walls between the pores are. Unfortunately, large variations in the atomic number of component elements introduced artifacts into the images, and high variations between grains prevented me from gathering statistically relevant data. Nevertheless, imaging of propellant with X-ray tomography (X-CT) has proven useful giving lots of previously unknown information of the physical structure of propellant grains and their composition, which can be used to develop new improvements to propellant. Met