Flow field mechanics mechanism of large-caliber soft recoil artillery brakes

<p indent="0mm">Soft recoiling of large-caliber artillery greatly reduces the recoil load on the artillery mount during firing by altering the recoil motion. In the soft recoil mechanism, the soft recoil brake is the key device responsible for reducing the recoil load. This study examines the flow-matching soft recoil artillery brake to reveal the flow characteristics of the internal flow field in the flow-matching soft recoil brake of large-caliber artillery and to understand hydraulic resistance formation. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the soft recoil artillery brake was built by establishing control equations for the internal fluid of the recoil brake. For this purpose, the finite volume method was adopted to discretize the flow field, and the dynamic layering method was applied to handle the moving boundaries of the flow field. Pressure data from the internal chambers of the recoil brake were collected through a firing experiment with soft recoil artillery. These data were used to verify the accuracy of the developed model. The flow speed in key regions, the transient pressure patterns in various chambers, and the evolution of local cavitation phenomena within the brake were analyzed. Based on the analysis results, the hydraulic resistance coefficients of the flow channels were obtained, the mechanism of hydraulic resistance formation was clarified, and the formation mechanism of cavitation and pressure fluctuation was found. These results revealed the fluctuating patterns of recoil resistance with cavitation pressure fluctuations. The results show that the model accurately describes the state of the recoil brake during firing. Furthermore, the developed model is more accurate than the classical hydraulic resistance theory for the recoil brake. The operating conditions of all components are stable; cavitation occurs only in localized regions. The hydraulic resistance coefficients of the key flow channels are below 3.0, ensuring stable operational conditions. The proposed model provides an intuitive description of the physical phenomena within the recoil brake that are difficult to measure and describe and offers a new approach to the design and analysis of recoil brakes.