Microscale integration of thermal, chemical, and mechanical boundaries for the prediction of macroscale barrel erosion

Abstract

Quantifying the erosion features and predicting the service life of the barrel are important steps in the development of intelligent artillery. The thermal, chemical and mechanical conditions of the barrel during the launching process are determined using the two-phase flow interior ballistics and experimental tests. On this basis, the calculation methods for barrel erosion at the macroscale and cross-scale are presented. Finnie erosion theory and near-ellipsoid hypothesis are used to model the macroscale erosion, and molecular dynamics, dislocation dynamics and agent models are used to model the cross-scale erosion. The high temperatures exceeding 2800 K, the complex chemical reactions and the mechanical impacts exceeding 400 m/s determine that the macroscale method cannot accurately obtain material parameters and quantify erosion features. However, the cross-scale method unifies the thermal, chemical and mechanical conditions at the microscale, characterizes material plasticity and crack propagation at the mesoscale, and accurately quantifies erosion features at the macroscale. Finally, the comparison between the experimental results and the calculations from the two methods further confirms the accuracy of the cross-scale method in quantifying the barrel erosion.