Numerical simulation of impact breakage of gun propellant charge

Fragmentation of gun charge bed is the basic reason of bore burst. Fragmentation dynamics of charge bed is the kernel content of launch safety. In order to simulate fragmentation of propellant bed, there is a need to obtain the packing structure of propellant bed at first. In this paper, the packing process of propellant bed under gravity is simulated, and the close-grained structure of propellant bed is achieved. Then, the 3D discrete element model of propellant bed is presented and the numerical analysis code, which can simulate impact fragmentation behavior of propellant grains, is developed. The fragmentation process of propellant bed under an impact load is calculated by the code, and the entire failure process of propellant grains is presented. Furthermore, the results obtained from simulations are in acceptable agreements with experiment observations, which indicates the accuracy of the computational model.