Numerical Study on Properties of Interior Ballistics According to Solid Propellant Position in Chamber

Analysis of the interior ballistics is essential for the development of gun or propellant configurations. The granular solid propellants with high energy and fast burning rate produce a large thrust in extremely short time intervals. For the study of these, therefore, it is necessary of a numerical code for the two-phase flow of the interior ballistics. Recently, an interior ballistics code (IBcode) for the two-phase flow using the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach has been developed. The SIMPLE algorithm and the SMART scheme have been used for the IBcode. The ghost-cell extrapolation method has been used for the moving boundary with the projectile movement. In this study, a performance of the interior ballistics according to the position of the solid propellant in the chamber has been investigated using the IBcode. In previous researches, propellants had been evenly distributed in the chamber. In this study, however, three cases of the existence of empty space in the chamber at which the propellants are not evenly distributed have been considered; Propellants are located in the region near the base, propellants in the region near the breech, and propellants in the center of the chamber, respectively. The 7-perforated configuration of the solid propellant has been used in this research. The results have shown the performance variations of the interior ballistics according to solid propellant position in the chamber. The cases of the propellants located in the region near the base and breech have shown that the value of the negative differential pressure and the difference between the breech pressure and the base pressure are much higher than those of the propellants located in the center of the chamber. The case of the propellants in the center of the chamber is, therefore, more profitable to improve the performance of the interior ballistics.Copyright © 2011 by KSME