Detonation products gun

To obtain a projectile velocity of about 1500 m/s with a powder gun or a compressed gas gun the barrel must be a few meters long in the former case and roughly 15 m in the latter one. In the present study a new device is proposed, based on the mechanical and thermodynamic properties of detonation products used as propelling gas and created by the detonation of a gaseous explosive mixture at a high initial pressure (100 bar). Results of computation of the projectile velocity using the detonation products of a C₂H₄-O₂-N₂ mixture are presented. They show that a high-velocity projectile (1500 m/s) might be obtained in a rather short barrel (4 m long). Moreover, this setup allows a wide range of velocities.