Computational Analysis of a Smart Fluid Damper used in an Artillery Gun Recoil System.

Abstract

Almost every country needs efficient technology to empower its defense system for various issues like safety from enemies, wars, cold wars, terrorism etc. Artillery guns play a vital role in battels. The recoil system of the artillery guns plays an important role of absorbing the thrust produced due to firing and bring the gun barrel to its original position for next round. The use of smart fluids in the damper of the recoil system can provide better controllability for various angles of firing as well as reduce the stroke length and hence recoil time which can reduce size of damper along with performance improvement. Smart fluids like Electrorheological (ER) or Magnetorheological (MR) fluids have ability to acquire yield strength under the influence of electric or magnetic field. Their quick response and reversibility have increased their applications in various areas like vibration controls, automotive sectors and many more. This dissertation is focused on performance evaluation of an artillery gun recoil system containing damper incorporated with Electrorheological fluid. With the use of mathematical model and suitable softwares the performance evaluation is done. The mathematical formulation for ER flow through the damper is validated with CFD results while the stroke length calculation is compared with experimental results of a prototype. The results show considerable performance improvement in smart recoil system than the conventional one. For further improvement, smart fluids having high yield strength, low sedimentation, smaller particle size and lesser response time are recommended.