A Simulation Model for Computation of Safety Distances of Artillery Guns Based on Casualty Criteria

Abstract

Artillery guns firings in offensive mode may lead to friendly casualties. It is amongst these firings that safety distance based on acceptable casualty criteria is defined so as to facilitate our own troop movement. The distances, up to which our own troops can move without any casualty or say, some acceptable percentage casualty is of utmost importance at the time of planning and operationalizing movement of troops. Movement of personnel towards the target can be visualized from two directions – along the line of firing and perpendicular to the line of firing.These safety distances depend upon characteristics of weapon, ammunition, fuze being used and direction of movement of troops. A simulation model based new methodology is presented in this paper which takes in to account all parameters involved viz., range, dispersion, terminal velocity of shell, angle of descent of shell, point of burst, experimental mass and spatial distribution of fragments and terminal velocity of fragments. The model is programmed and implemented in MATLAB® and results are validated with experimental values