Modeling High-Temperature Erosive Gas Flow to Support Barrel Erosion Reduction Concept Modeling for Fire Support Gun Application

"New requirements for modern gun systems have greatly increasedthe propellant flame temperature and reactivity of the combustionproducts. As a result, thermochemical erosion can greatlyreduced the service life of the gun tubes in these systems.Coatings and liners have been used to mitigate erosion, withmixed results. In order to design a new gun tube which resistsexcessive wear, a thorough understanding of the mechanismscontributing to thermochemical erosion is necessary. Althoughmost of the tools required to calculate thermochemical erosionexist as individual programs, the actual analysis procedure isquite cumbersome, labor intensive and error prone. Theseindividual physical models need to be extended to increase theirapplicability for new gun systems (such as a surface-crackingmodel) and the results merged into a Unified ThermochemicalErosion Program, TCEP. This new program development will resultin a single computer code that melds modern computationalmodeling with all the prior knowledge of thermochemical erosion.The new code will allow designers to parametrically evaluate andcompare erosion performance resulting from various combinationsof propellant, materials, and wear-reduction technologies. Thisscreening tool will allow the designer to concentrate on the mostpromising wear resistant technology.BENEFITS: The benefits of the development of the Phase II product, the Unified Thermochemical Erosion Program (TCEP), are that i