Re: tank gun acceleration versus orbital gun acceleration

Thanks everyone for giving me the information on various guns.	I had no
idea that tank guns gave that much acceleration to the projectiles.  But
even assuming constant acceleration and using some simple physics
formulae
(s= 1/2*a*t^2, v=at, etc.) I can see the acceleration is in tens of
thousands of gees.

So really, superguns could give a much lower acceleration to its
projectiles than tank guns... that's very surprising to me.

On Mon, 28 May 2001, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> The biggest approximation is that you assume a constant acceleration.
With 
> today's propellant-powered guns it isn't, so the accels for "dumb"
tank 
> main gun rounds peaks around 40-50,000 g.
> 
> >   Also note that we are talking about a "dumb" round--the guided
missile 
> > rounds generally have fairly low velocities (gun-wise).
> 
> [ka-snip]
> 
> > From this, I think you can begin to see that barrel length is VERY 
> > important to the solution.
> 
> Yep, and superguns tend to be very long indeed. But also the 
> time-acceleration profile - if you can maintain a reasonably constant 
> acceleration all along the barrel you get away with a far lower peak 
> acceleration for any given muzzle velocity.
> 
> >I'm sure Oerjan can come up with better numbers--and probably has the
data 
> >on how fast the guided tank rounds come out of the barrel...
> 
> Not at home, unfortunately :-(
> 
> Later,
> Oerjan
> oerjan.ohlson@telia.com
> 
> "Life is like a sewer.
>   What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
> -Hen3ry
>