Surface damage evolution of artillery barrel under high-temperature erosion and high-speed impact

Abstract

Thermochemical erosion and mechanical wear are the primary sources of surface damage in artillery barrel chambers, severely restricting the interior ballistic characteristics and service life of the barrel weapon. This paper proposes a general surface damage computational model, which contains three sub-models: collision wear, melting exfoliation, and high-speed jet wear. The combination of the three sub-models can predict the surface damage of mechanical structures caused by the coupling of thermochemical erosion and mechanical wear. The contact force model to describe collision behavior is first proposed, and the collision wear model can be obtained based on the contact force model. Moreover, the temperature distribution of the barrel chamber is calculated, by this the melting exfoliation model can be obtained. Considering that melting exfoliation and collision wear have the non-negligible effect on the attack angle of high-speed jet, this paper equates melting exfoliation and collision wear to the variation of attack angle size and investigates the high-speed jet wear of the barrel chamber. The experimental research of the surface damage on the barrel chamber is organized, and the detailed assessments show that the general surface damage computational model has a good agreement with experimental data.