Thermoelastic Analysis of Composite Railgun Housing Under Rapid Fire

Abstract

Carbon fiber reinforced barrel can be applied to the lightweight design of railgun. The composite barrel will improve railgun performance with better flexibility and small muzzle disturbance. With magnetism-thermal-structure coupled analysis, this paper gives the transient thermal stress distribution of the composite barrel for single shot. Besides, two cases of a rapid fire with five shots per minute and ten shots per minute are studied respectively. In the end, dynamic strength of the composite barrel has been checked with specialized failure modes for both fiber wraps and metal rails. The results show that temperature rising of rails for single shot is higher with fiber laminate housing than with insulated steel plate housing. When the railgun undergoes a rapid fire, thermal stress of the composite housing and rails has an increasing tendency. The maximum rate of fire for the railgun must be limited to an acceptable level, considering that all materials of the composite barrel should remain linear elastic.