Modification of RDX and HMX crystals in procedure of solvent/anti-solvent by statistical methods of Taguchi analysis design and MLR technique

Abstract

Many of the physical and functional properties of RDX and HMX explosives are related to the crystalline structure of these materials. Crystalline defects affect the quality of the explosives. Therefore, in order to enhance the quality of these materials, it is necessary to form crystals with the lowest defects. In this research, we report the optimization of recrystallization process of RDX and HMX by statistical techniques. The solvent/anti-solvent procedure was used for recrystallization of HMX and RDX particles. The four parameters of i) ratio of anti-solvent to solvent, ii) ratio of solute to solvent, iii) aging time, and iv) cooling rate of mixture, were optimized by Taguchi analysis design. Taguchi L16 orthogonal array was used with sixteen rows corresponding to the number of tests in four columns at four levels. The apparent density of recrystallized of RDX and HMX particles was considered as the quality characteristic with the concept of “the larger-the-better”. The obtained graphs showed that the studied parameters were optimized in ratio 1:1 for anti-solvent to solvent, ratio 0.1 g⋅mL-1 for solute to solvent, aging time of 2 h and cooling rate of 1 °C⋅min-1. Also, the correlation between the investigated parameters and apparent density of crystals were studied by multiple linear regressions (MLR) method for obtaining a model of prediction of apparent density. The P-values were indicated that in confidence level of 95%, the null hypothesis is rejected and a meaningful addition is observed in the proposed model.

Keywords

• HMX
• RDX
• Solvent/anti-solvent
• Taguchi analysis
• Apparent density