The thermal oxidative aging of a crosslinked hydroxy-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB)/isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI) based polyurethane rubber, used as a polymeric binder in solid propellant grain, was investigated at temperatures from 25 C to 125 C. The changes in tensile elongation, polymer network properties and chain dynamics, mechanical hardening and density were determined with a range of techniques including modulus profiling, solvent swelling, NMR relaxation and O{sub 2} permeability measurements. We critically evaluated the Arrhenius methodology that is commonly used with a linear extrapolation of high temperature aging data using extensive data superposition and highly sensitive oxygen consumption experiments. The effects of other constituents in the propellant formulation on aging were also investigated. We conclude that crosslinking is the dominant process at higher temperatures and that the degradation involves only limited hardening in the bulk of the material. Significant curvature in the Arrhenius diagram of the oxidation rates was observed. This is similar to results for other rubber materials.

A class of planar microstructure is proposed which provide high accelerating gradients when excited by an infrared laser pulse. These structures consist of parallel dielectric slabs separated by a vacuum gap; the dielectric or the outer surface coating are spatially modulated at the laser wavelength along the beam direction so as to support a standing wave accelerating field. We have developed numerical and analytic models of the accelerating mode fields in the structure. We show an optimized coupling scheme such that this mode is excited resonantly with a large quality factor. The status of planned experiments on fabricating and measuring these planar structures will be described.