Innovative perspective on measuring the sensitivity of boron potassium nitrate to different stimuli

Abstract. Boron potassium nitrate is a pyrotechnic mixture often used as an ignition charge for rocket propellant igniters. Regarding energetic materials, safety is a limiting feature for use and is generally referred to in the form of sensitivity. Boron potassium nitrate is reported to be safe for impact, friction, and electrostatic discharge, according to the most commonly used methods. The first two parameters are well described in the literature, while the latter is not sufficiently detailed. For this reason, it was proposed to analyze the sensitivity to electrostatic discharge of a boron potassium nitrate composition and evaluate safety from an innovative perspective, using the FEST method. This method is efficient for its ability to create, with a low number of trials, a distribution function for sensitivity that considers the entire range of experiments but also guarantees confidence for the maximum likelihood estimation in the area of interest due to its procedure that focuses on ignition data overlap. The ESD results were presented as sensitivity distribution functions and suggest that the composition may not be as safe as usually reported.