Prediction of Ignition Delay Times for Amine-based Liquid Propellants through a QSPR Approach

Decreasing the ignition delay time in the combustion chamber of a rocket engine is required from a safety point of view. However it takes a lot of time and money to find the most suitable compounds with a low ignition delay time. In the present research, a model is proposed to predict the ignition delay time of aminebased liquid propellants through the quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) method. This model was derived based on 35 data sets collected from reliable references and by the selection of appropriate descriptors using multivariate linear regression (MLR). The determination coefficient, mean absolute deviation and root mean square deviation of the new model were 0.9901, 2.51 and 3.19 ms, respectively, which indicates high reliability. Furthermore, the values of the cross validation coefficients of the new proposed model were Q²LOO = 0.9903 and Q²LMO = 0.9906, which confirm its sufficient validation. The most important variables which have an effect on the ignition delay time of amine-based liquid propellants were identified as the elemental composition, temperature and the percentage ratio of oxidizer to fuel (O/F).