Erosion Modeling of Vented Combustor Cannon Bore Materials

Abstract

Vented combustor experiments are often successful at providing relative erosion results, but these results are typically inconclusive when compared to other vented combustor experiments. As a result of this deficiency, a new method for successfully modeling erosion of vented combustor cannon bore materials has been developed. This modeling method, in conjunction with limited-scale firings, provides a cost effective means of comprehensively studying erosion of coated cannon bore materials. The method is derived from our very successful similar method for modeling coated cannon bore erosion of medium and large caliber gun systems. These system models are based on years of eroded cannon characterizations and erosion theory development. We have fired and modeled gun steel, chromium, tantalum, molybdenum, rhenium, and niobium cannon bore protection materials. Each of these material types has a different set of erosive degradation thresholds that are governed by the presence of a less-reducing (more-metal oxidizing), more-reducing (more-metal carburizing), or intermediate-reducing solid propellant combustion environment. Erosion modeling predictions are computed for these six materials at the various reducing combustion environment degrees. Our modeling results show that all of these materials, with the exception of chromium, have significant differences in their erosive thresholds/performance for our typical solid propellant combustion environment spectrum. The degree of these differences explains why these materials erode so differently at the more-metal carburizing and oxidizing solid propellant combustion environment extremes.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA397169

Entities

People

  • Samuel Sopok

Organizations

  • United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aging (Materials)
  • Boundary Layer
  • Chemical Kinetics
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Chemistry
  • Combustion
  • Combustors
  • Embrittlement
  • Erosion Resistance
  • High Temperature
  • Material Degradation Processes
  • Materials
  • Materials Science
  • Metals
  • Molybdenum
  • Propellants
  • Solid Propellants

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Metallurgy
  • ballistics.