Study of Residual Stresses in the Barrel Processed by the Radial Forging

When the gun fires in rapid firing rate, serious factors such as the high ambient temperatures, thermal transients and corrosive-erosive environment existing at the bore surface limit the barrel life. Therefore, most of the current gunpsilas rifling is produced by the radial forging process of the high-alloy steel. The residual stresses in the forged product directly affect the fatigue strength, stress corrosion, shape accuracy and service life of the barrel. In this paper, a FEA software DEFORM-2D based on the Updated Lagrange formulation with a rigid-plastic material behavior was used for modeling and simulating the residual stresses of the rifling part in the barrel. The material was modeled with the elastic-plastic behavior, and sliding-sticking friction model was utilized to modeling the die-workpiece and mandrel-workpiece contact. The quantitative effects of process parameters on residual stresses were investigated which would provide a useful tool for optimizing the process.