A combined end-to-end electrothermal chemical gun model is presented. An electrothermal chemical gun is a conventional artillery piece in which the solid propellant ignition system is replaced by a plasma source. Igniting a solid propellant with a plasma leads to many enhancements in performance, including reduced and highly repeatable ignition delay time, loss of temperature sensitivity to ignition time, and increased muzzle exit velocity at cold and ambient temperatures. These enhancements allow an electrothermally ignited round to be fired near the gun design limits at a wide range of ambient conditions.;The combined end-to-end electrothermal chemical gun model consists of four major submodels: a capillary plasma generator model; a plasma-air chemistry computational fluid dynamics model; a coupled ablation-thermal model for simulation of the plasma-propellant interaction; and a collisional plasma sheath model for determination of the convective heat flux from the plasma to the propellant bed. The primary focus of this work is the modeling of the plasma-propellant interaction. A thorough understanding of the physics of the plasma-propellant interaction is considered one of the key elements to the success of practical electrothermal chemical gun implementation.;The major contributions to the field of electrothermal chemical gun modeling outlined in this work include: the development of a plasma-air chemistry model for electrothermal chemical gun application; simulations demonstrating the importance of plasma-air chemistry in electrothermal chemical gun experimental geometries; the development of a plasma-propellant interaction model for determination of the total heat flux reaching the propellant bed; and the development of a collisional plasma sheath model for determination of the convective heat flux reaching the propellant bed.
展开▼
