Assessment of variable thermophysical properties on temperature history of a 155 mm gun barrel using ANSYS

Accurate computation of gun barrel temperature history is necessary to predict the barrel-wear and cook-off. Most of the previous researchers, in their computational models, neglected the variation of thermal conductivity and specific heat of gun metal, with temperature. It is expected to introduce an error in the results. In this work, this error was estimated by incorporating the variation of thermal properties. A new scheme of gun barrel simulation, which is based on finite element methods, was developed. Results showed that assumption of constant thermophysical properties introduced an error of 3.27% in computation of maximum bore surface temperature.