U.S. Army activities in multidimensional modeling of electrothermal-chemical guns

Progress towards developing a first-principles capability to simulate the dominant physical processes in an electrothermal-chemical (ETC) gun is described. The computational model is the CRAFT Navier-Stokes solver which implements advanced implicit/upwind numerics with strongly coupled chemistry and generalized grid dynamics. The model provides a framework for incorporation of physics submodules developed by a team of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), and the U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) scientists as well as industry and university researchers.