High-Pressure Conjugate Heat Transfer Model of Vented Vessel Gun Erosion Simulator

This study develops a high-pressure conjugate heat transfer (CHT) model to investigate thermal erosion in a vented vessel gun erosion simulator under extreme propellant gas conditions. Employing OpenFOAM’s multi-region compressible solver with advanced turbulence modeling, the framework fully couples turbulent flow and heat conduction across the fluid–solid interface. Experimental inlet pressure profiles (peak of 255 MPa) from vented vessel tests serve as time-dependent boundary conditions. Key erosion indicators - wall temperature, heat flux, cumulative heat load, and integrated excess temperature above the steel critical temperature - are extracted from the simulations.
To address uncertainties in turbulence parameters, a machine learning (ML)-enhanced uncertainty quantification (UQ) workflow was implemented. This combines Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) with Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) as the surrogate model. The approach enables efficient parameter calibration, sensitivity analysis, and probabilistic confidence bounds for the key thermal erosion indicators using only a few high-fidelity simulations. The model accurately predicts heat propagation and potential melting zones and shows good agreement with the experimental erosion patterns observed in the vented vessel tests. It provides a good tool for evaluating the erosion resistance of barrel materials, optimizing propellant formulations, and supporting the design of low-erosion, high-performance gun systems.