HIGH VELOCITY GUN LAUNCH FRAGMENT IMPACT STUDIES AND HOW EVENTS CAN GO VERY WRONG

摘要

High velocity fragment impact studies have become an important factor in the testing ofinsensitive munitions (IM) to ensure compliance and to demonstrate the safe use ofmunitions, in an operational requirement. A 40mm calibre, high velocity long gun systemhas been developed by QinetiQ, to meet the NATO STANAG 4496 standard highvelocity fragment impact test requirement. However, it uses an internal ballistic (IB)solution which is optimised for the higher velocity as defined in the STANAG document.A 30mm calibre gun system is used to meet the lower velocity fragment impact testrequirement. Whilst the fragment’s impact velocity when using the 30mm gun systemcan be pushed to achieve impact velocities of ~2000m/s, there is a distinct gap in theability to achieve terminal velocities between 2000m/s and 2530m/s using these two gunsystems. To understand a munition’s reaction phenomena by fragment impact betweenthese two figures would be a very desirable option and would be beneficial to themunition designer from the IM perspective. This paper will report and discuss some ofthe experimental results and the problems encountered during high velocity fragmentimpact studies with powder gun systems.