Developed pressure cell apparatus for measuring kineticsof mixtures of oxidizers with Alin terms of pressurization rate:

Reaction of Al with

Synthesis /source

Oxidizer particle size (nm)

(dP/dt)max

(psi/µs)Fe2O3 Aero-sol-gel 200 ~0.000096

CuO Spray-pyrolysis

250 4.45

KMnO4 Spray-drying 250 290

McCormick, ZachariahMcCormick, Zachariah

Signal conditioner

Pressure Sensor

In-line charge amplifier

Sample

Nichrome

Developed an aerosol-based sol-gel method for makingmetal oxide nanoparticles with high internal surface areaand nanothermite metastable intermolecular composites

A nodal algorithm and software were developed to

solve the aerosol general dynamic equation (GDE) with size-dependent surface tension

Number of Atoms2000 4000 6000 8000

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

Sonwane et al.Polynomial fitBulk σ

Size-dependent surface tension for Al at 1000 Kfrom molecular dynamics simulation:

Including this variation allows more realistic simulations of nucleation, coagulation, and surface growth.

McCormick, Zachariah (cont.)McCormick, Zachariah (cont.)

Snapshots of MC simulation

Aggregating nanoparticles in an evaporating aerosol droplet (initial number of solute particles 25,000; relative humidity

50%)

McCormick, Zachariah (cont.)McCormick, Zachariah (cont.)

Monte-Carlo Simulation for Two-Component Aerosol Nucleation, Diffusion, and Coagulation

time

Current directions of computations• Parallel programming for larger-scale calculation

• Two-component 2-D code that accounts for

• viscosity • local concentration • nucleation

• growth of aggregated particles • phase segregation and reaction

McCormick, Zachariah (cont.)McCormick, Zachariah (cont.)

• Experimental work in progress• Using polystyrene-latex to synthesize porous oxidizer

particles (CuO) with organized pores• Studying the effect on nanothermite reactions of loading

the oxidizer pore with nitromethane• Synthesis of aluminum by thermal cracking of an alane

aerosol.