Rapid-fire Tube Erosion Life Prediction

Weapon barrel life is divided into fatigue life and ablation life, the life of many barrels is determined by the ablation life. The research of barrel ablation life is mainly based on deterministic analysis method so far, without considering the randomness influence of related parameters in the process of barrel ablation. In this paper, the stochastic finite element method is employed to analyze the shooting process of the rapid-fire weapon fully considering the influence of barrel size and material parameters on barrel ablation.First of all, the two-dimensional whole barrel finite element model is built for the temperature field analysis and emphasizes the temperature response of the barrel inner wall point which is at the beginning of the rifling. The influence of various shooting criterions on the barrel thermal effect is analyzed. Then the dangerous barrel section is used to create one-dimensional finite element model for the temperature field simulation. The validity of using one-dimensional finite element model to simulate the temperature field is guaranteed after comparing it with the result of temperature field simulation of the whole barrel finite element model. Considering the randomness influence of the barrel size and material parameters, the Monte Carlo method is used in the simulation of the temperature field and during the process the theoretical calculation formula of ablation thickness is used. The distribution of ablation thickness is drawn which can be used as to determine the ablation rate empirical constants. Finally, two methods are used to calculate the barrel ablation life which is based on the failure model of cumulative ablation thickness. The former calculation method takes the change of the barrel size during the ablation process into account, the latter one take the randomness influence of the barrel size and material parameters on ablation into account. The results show that the heat flux density directly determines the barrel ablation life. The ablation life increases while the heat flow density and ablation thickness get smaller and smaller in the procedure of shooting.The exploration in this paper provides a new reference for the determination of the empirical calculation formula of the ablation rate and two new ideas for the calculation of barrel ablation life which can provide a useful theoretical support for the design and use of barrel.