Misc Experiments - Copper Benzoate Rocket
Date: 2006-04-17
Description
A simple nozzleless rocket testing an experimental propellant based on Copper Benzoate fuel. Constructed on SBR tooling using a 1/4" NEPT tube, fused with blackmatch and tied to a kebab stick.
Comments
Enormous cato!
The case was completely shreaded, quite impressive for a NEPT tube. The stick was even snapped off. Similar to the Benzolift cato previously experenced the entire event took less than one frame and its extreme violence was rather unexpected.
A very similar propellant flew successfully in an unvideoed test the previous night. Although it was a shorter core, on the wolter-short tooling. I had modified it by adding some PVC in an attempt to improve the colour, the resulting loss of burn-rate performance was expected to work well with the longer core tooling.
It is possible I cracked the grain cinching the two clove hitches that held the stick in place. I did not hot-melt glue the stick on as I normally do, but I have successfully tied sticks on whistle rockets in the past and used the same amount of force in doing so.
The propellant lacked the petrolatum typical of whistle propellants, which may have contributed to it cracking. It was also difficult to extract from the tooling, so I will try again with the petroleum jelly if for no other reason than easy extraction. Interesting, the propellant burnt quite slowly loose. Loose whistle, even rocket-propellant while still damp with shellite burns much faster.
I am still suprised how violently it went from just starting to thrust to all-out detonation. The sound of the explosion was very sharp, again like the benzolift cato, this time it is easily heard (and seen on the spectrogram) that near-by metal objects were sent ringing from the shockwave.
Attachments
| title | type | size |
|---|---|---|
| Video | video/x-msvideo | 1.506 Mbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture | image/jpeg | 25.057 kbytes |
| Post-Mortem Picture | image/jpeg | 59.046 kbytes |