Validation of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Gun Dynamics Simulation Codes for Prototype Kinetic Energy

Abstract

Abstract : This report compares a priori gun-projectile dynamic simulations to experimental ballistic jump test data for seven 120-mm prototype kinetic energy (KE) projectiles and describes the methodology used for the comparison. The projectiles contain significant differences in their charge, subprojectile, and sabot designs that span the design parameters encountered in KE cartridge development. In such tests, four or more sets of orthogonal radiograph images (x-rays), which are typically used to characterize the state of the projectile at muzzle exit, can be directly compared to predictions from ARL's gun-projectile dynamic simulation (GPDS) codes. The results from these comparisons show that the GPDS codes were able to predict the ballistic experimental results except for the transverse center-of-gravity jump velocity in two cases. For the two cases, the difference in predicted and experiment is shown to occur when a high average rate is seen at the muzzle exit and is probably due to the timing error associated with muzzle exit.