In combustion research, nitromethane is an important nitro-compounded liqui
d propellant offering high performance. Additionally it can be used as a mo
del substance for understanding mechanisms of combustion of solid propellan
ts. The objectives of investigations were the burning behaviour and the fla
me spectrum in the UV/VIS spectral range because of the appearance of stron
g radical emissions also present in flames of other energetic materials. Th
e evaluation is based on a detailed chemical kinetics and a linear combusti
on model including a reduced mechanism.