High Fidelity In-Bore Pressure Modeling

Significant research efforts have been conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of projectile-weapon interactions at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. The objective of this paper is to increase the fidelity of in-bore modeling and simulations that will facilitate the development of component and system models for U.S. Army weapon systems. Specifically, the in-bore pressure as a projectile travels through a gun tube, which has been known to be spatially and temporally varying distribution, will be programmatically taken into account in finite element analysis of launch dynamics. A computer program that embeds IBHVG2 Interior Ballistics code was implemented to automate the process. This tool can apply a substantial number of pressure curves to the corresponding barrel locations and generate LS- DYNA® compatible keyword files for analysis. The approach yields better accuracy and eliminates tedious manual efforts. In short, the development greatly streamlines the modeling efforts and significantly increases the fidelity of in-bore pressure modeling.