Conventional Guns

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Introduction

Conventional Guns denotes weapon that propels a mass using the exothermic decomposition of a chemical propellant in a controlled manner, with propellant being constrained inside a barrel (as opposed to co-moving with the projectile, as is the case with rockets). Having evolved from porcelain filled bamboo tubes that expel shrapnel using the explosion of gunpowder, attested to in the 12th Century in China, and subsequently introduced to Europe by the 14th Century, its prominence in literature that touches on military matters has been remarkable. Therefore it is not surprising that conventional guns continues to feature in many science fiction with a focus on warfare, although these depiction has seldomly been fair. Quite often, conventional gun technology have been treated as one of lower technological sophistication, that cannot hope to compete with other weapon systems (such as railguns, coilguns, and especially with missiles), and authors have often resorted to "too clever by half" twists that supposedly circumvent limitation of conventional gun, only to miss important caveats and leave out more plausible advances that may come either as natural consequences of the prevailing technological advancement of a setting, or as potential advances with some effort.

In any case, whatever the reason for this deplorable state of affairs may be, in line with Galactic Library's goal of providing literature where other sources fail, this article will seek to explore the design space of conventional guns with the help of interior ballistic theory, with a special focus on its impact for science-fiction worlds, and outline some real-world advanced techniques that promises to further improve upon this basis. Naturally, this will have particular impact on settings that are more near-future.

Theory of Interior Ballistics

Perhaps one reason for the general lack of interest, even in sci-fi interest groups, that conventional guns garner, can be attributed to the sheer complexity of the associated theory that describes the acceleration of projectile under combustion of a propellant, known as the theory of interior ballistics. The nature of the process precludes simple and elegant equation like the analogous "Rocket Equation" for rocketry that encapsulates the essence of rocket kinematics. Instead, accurate models are always solved numerically. Thus this article will only go over the details of interior ballistics in so much as it lends to an intuitive understanding of the kinematics of gun systems, or as pertinent to establishing performance figures, and refer the reader to more systematic treatment of the same in reference section for the process of arriving at the detailed calculations later on. Notation in this article generally follows the Eastern tradition as established by M.E.Serebryakov, although the following argument has been much improved by consulting the work of J.Corner as well.

The Propellant

Propellant that are suitable for conventional gun must exhibit a stable burning (in this context, burning means exothermic decomposition in the absence of (appreciable) atmospheric oxygen) behavior. This is best illustrated by briefly going over the history of Nitrocellulose, the primary ingredient in almost all propellant up until rather recently.

When first synthesized circa 1845, Nitrocellulose was found to detonate violently, where upon ignition, a mechanical shockwave is rapidly setup, that propagates in all directions, compressing the material in front to the point of ignition as well. The shock front propagates at a few km/s, limited only by the (compressed) speed of sound in the combustion products, rapidly consuming all propellant. Thus, for 40 years, it was employed as an explosive, despite its advantage over black powder (thrice as much energy density, very little solid product and decreased sensitivity) being clearly evident. It was not until the mid 1880s that Nitrocellulose was tamed by dissolving it in a suitable organic solvent, such as alcohol or ether, that causes microscopic swelling of the micro structure of the fiber. In this state, the propellant behaves like a putty that can be extruded or cast to the desired shape. This leaves microscopic holes, or pores after the solvent is driven off through heat. Now, the behavior of burning changes completely: When ignited, the propellant is heated, at the surface, by the radiated heat of the exothermic combustion products. This causes burning to (largely) happen along a parallel plane to that of the initial shape, with the rate limited by the bulk thermal conductivity of the propellant, to around a few cm/s, at gun pressures, an order of magnitude reduction of 5. This development allowed Nitrocellulose to rapidly replace black-powder as the preeminent component in gun propellants in the next decade, relegating the latter to be used as an igniter and ignition booster for the most part.

A brief discussion of further development of propellant science since that period to that of modern time is given for the sake of completeness, to spare the reader of tracking down fragmentary information across multiple, cryptic DTIC reports and digging through Internet Archive.

In the decades immediately following, Nitroglycerin was added to the mix and the propellant is dissolved in the common solvent Acetone, greatly increasing both the energy density and flame temperature (and errossiveness) of propellant. This being known as the double-base propellant, the original formulation became retroactively known as single-base propellant. In the wake of WW1, the German innovation of using a Nitroglycerin - Ethyl Centralite mixture as both a component of the final propellant and a solvent to cause swelling, eliminating the time and expense necessary to extract the solvent. This "solvent-less" gun powder was rapidly adopted, and especially useful in rocket motors where it would have been extremely difficult to extract solvent due to the thickness of the cast involved. Immediately prior to WW2, another German innovation, that of a modified double base propellant where Nitroglycerin was replaced in part or in full with Diethylene Glycol Dinitrate (DEGDN), both relieved the war-industry of the burden of Nitroglycerin production (which depended upon foodstuff) while also improving the thermal-chemistry of propellant gasses, with overall lower molecular weight, facilitating either increased force or reduced temperature. The downside is reduced thermal stability, much noticeable in hotter climates. Triple base propellant, involving the addition of Nitroguanidine, as the primary energetic component, increasing the performance further, although the higher cost (and limited supply) of Nitroguanidine delayed its adoption until after WW2.

As of late, modified double-base propellant and triple-base propellant appears to be the choice when performance is required for gun system, and expanse can be spared in pursuit of the same, while single-base propellant remains dominant for small-arms purposes. Reflecting their usage, the former two usually comes in grains of defined shape and perforation, sized to suit their gun, while the latter tends to be made in simpler geometry like strand or ball.

Although attempt has been made since then to replace triple base propellant with Mixed Nitrate Ester propellant of greater availability, and indeed various mixture had been type classified, composed of Nitrocellulose mixed with varying proportions of BTTN, TMETN, TEGDN and DEGDN. this appears to not have been widely adopted, perhaps due to a lack of necessity. Finally, it bears mentioning the composite propellant, consisting of a heterogeneous mixture of oxidizer and fuel particles. This appears to not have been adopted for internal ballistic use as much as it is prevalent in rocketry (various Aluminum Percolate Composite Propellant, or APCP comes to mind), due to its lower performance than pure CHON systems.

In recent years, two of the more promising lines of research that bears special mention includes the work on Nitramine propellant, and that of highly energetic poly-Nitrogen Compounds (otherwise colloquially known as Nitromemes in relevant interest circles). The premise behind Nitramine propellant is simple enough: that of taming RDX (Hexogen, Cyclonite) and HMX (Octogen), well known and highly energetic chemical explosives, for use as propellants. It was found that by grinding RDX particles down to 5 micrometers or so, and suspending these particles in plasticizes, these energetic materials could be made to combust stably enough for use as propellant. Work around propellants that consist mostly of RDX had come to fruition by the 1980s to 1990s, with formulations being type classified and adopted for use in tank guns currently in service (as of 2023). Work on HMX based propellant with greater force than RDX is currently an ongoing effort.

Another, more speculative line of research concerns poly-Nitrogen compounds. While Nitrogen allotropes, whose names grows in exoticism with the number of atoms being forced together, from Trinitrogen (N3) and Tetranitrogen (N4), to the likes of Hexazine (N6), Octaazacubane (N8), and Bipentazole (N10), are generally considered too unstable for use as propellant (indeed many aforementioned species are considered meta-stable with lifetime measured in seconds). If these can be made to be somehow stable in storage, and dissociate at a reasonable rate after ignition, the much higher density of energy stored within coupled with reasonable molecular weight (the primary product will be N2 (gas) at ~28, as compared to 23-25 of current propellant) would expectantly produce gun system of tremendous performance. However, there is no research at present hinting at how this might be achieved. As a concession to practicality, less energetic compounds can be had with the addition of C,O,H,F to high enthalpy Nitrogen, creating chemically stable structures. It is possible that with the use of inert binders and by applying similar techniques to that of stabilizing Nitramine propellant discussed above, these could be made to burn at reasonable rate, although this too remains in the realms of speculation.

The Simplest Gun

The simplest gun system in terms of ballistics theory is one where all the propellant has burned to depletion before the projectile has appreciably moved. This type of gun promise the highest possible ballistic efficiency (the amount of energy transferred to the projectile out of the total energy content of the propellant load) out of a given barrel length and given weight of propellant and projectile.