Comparisons of internal ballistics simulations of the AGARD gun

Organisations from France, Germany and the UK are participating in a EUROPA Technical Arrangement (TA) research programme on Ignition Phenomena. The technical objectives of this programme are to study the ignition and combustion of conventional and novel solid propellants by conventional igniters, pyrotechnic igniters and plasma. A key part of the project is the development and incorporation of improved ignition and combustion submodels into internal ballistics codes in order to simulate ignition phenomena. As part of the process of baselining each internal ballistics code and establishing their capabilities at the start of the TA, each participant simulated a standard test case, known as the AGARD gun. The codes compared included one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) two-phase flow models. This paper describes the AGARD gun, the codes, the propellant heating and ignition submodels and compares the predicted results.