Modeling and Simulation of Heterogeneous Propellant Combustion to Investigate the Influence on Gun Performance

An objective in the development of new gun propellants is to increase the performance of the gun system. 3D printing offers the opportunity to use heterogeneous propellant grains to achieve this goal. In this work presents a simulation model for the combustion of heterogeneously structured gun propellants. Since the burning rate of these types of grains is a local quantity on the surface, the surface regression and pressure evolution model must be coupled. For the first time the surface regression of a heterogeneous unit sphere consisting of two hemispheres is presented. Further the coupled simulation of a homogeneous ball propellant in a closed vessel is shown. In the future, the presented model and simulation allows to investigate the potential of arbitrarily heterogeneously structured propellant grains to increase the gun performance.