The Effect of Surface Roughness on the Trajectory of Howitzer Shell

Abstract

Surface state change of ammunition generated during the storage period increases the surface roughness and this affects the flight of ammunition, but there are no research results quantitatively indicating this. In this study, the drag force for each Mach number of howitzer shells was calculated through CFD to which the surface data of the howitzer shell was applied, and analysis of trajectory was performed using drag force values as an input of the 4th Runge-Kutta method, and the degree of decrease of the maximum range caused by the surface roughness of the howitzer shell was estimated. As a result, it was confirmed that the maximum range of howitzer shell with high surface roughness was 1.12 % shorter than that of howitzer shell without roughness. It was confirmed that the effect of surface roughness on the trajectory is not negligible.