3rd National Conference on Advancements in Simulation & Experimental Techniques in
Mechanical Engineering (NCASEme-2016)
Design and analysis of a gun barrel chamber
Vishvesh Dixit* Ishbir Singh*
Research scholar Associate professor
vishveshdixit@ymail.com ishbir@rediffmail.com
vishveshdixit5@gmail.com
Department of Mechanical Engineering
School of Engineering & Emerging Technologies
Baddi University of Emerging Sciences and Technology
Baddi, H.P.
Abstract- A gun barrel is the backbone for any type of firearm
which is capable of firing any type of material with the help of
stored energy either by compressing the gas and explosion of the
propellants or by any other mean. During the process of firing a
bullet or projectile the barrel undergoes many types of loads
which produce stresses in it. So that the design of the barrel must
be strong enough to withstand the heavy pressure loads. Due to
the absence of the design data a simple design of the gun barrel
was made using cad software. The chamber of the gun barrel was
designed for the 14.5 x 114 mm bullet also known as 0.57 caliber
bullet. In most of the developing countries homemade fire arm is
a major problem faced by the criminologist not only because it
was dangerous for the society but it is also dangerous for the
holder itself. Most of the home made fire arms are made up of
cheap steel and are weak in there fabrication. Keeping this thing
in mind the gun barrel was to be of structural steel, to perform
static analysis using ANSYS. Using a finite element analysis
package a model was generated for the analysis purpose. This
paper deals with the analysis of the gun barrel for the given
boundary conditions.
Keywords- firearm; barrel chamber; 0.57 caliber bullet; finite
element analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
A barrel chamber is part of the gun barrel which holds the
bullet shell during breach loading. It is the most important part
of the gun and very common to fail during the firing process
of the bullet. On the basis of the barrel chamber drawing the
firearm has been classified for their categories like small arms
and heavy machine gun etc. A firearm may be defined as the
portable gun heaving a barreled weapon that launches one or
more projectile often driven by the action of an explosive or
by compressed gas. A gun is a normal tubular weapon or other
design to discharge projectile or other material. The projectile
may be gas, liquid, solid or energy and may be free as with
bullet and artillery shell or captive as with the Taser probe and
whaling harpoon(1-3). It means the design of the projectile
may varies according to the design of the firearm but it usually
affected by the action of gas pressure, either by the help of
compressed and stored gas by mechanical means or by rapid
combustion of propelled material which is more commonly
used method for the propulsion of the projectile.
The destruction of the target always depends on the design
of the projectile and energy hold by the projectile. During the
rapid expansion or explosion of the propellant the barrel
experience different kinds of stresses. The barrel is one of the
Vijender Rajora*
Assistant professor
rajoravijenderrajora@gmail.com
most important parts of the firearm. It may be consider the
back bone of the firearm. Barrel chamber works under a very
high pressure condition more the 360mpa and it is the most
common part or component to fail. For that reason the design
of the barrel must be designed so that the failures do not occur.
In this particular study the barrel chamber was designed on
the basis of the 14.5 x 114mm which is heavy machine gun
cartridge and anti-material cartridge which is originally design
for the PRTS and PTRD anti-tank rifles by the Soviet Union in
1939. In this document a static structural analysis research was
conducted on the gun barrel model, this research deals with
the finite element analysis of the 3D model. The 3D model of
the barrel is first designed using solid works 2013 and the
analysis part was performed using ANSYS software package.
As per the earlier studies represents the data related to the
fabrication and manufacturing of the homemade firearm
throughout the world of various types of improvised firearm
like revolver, gun, pipe gun and shotgun, which is very big
issue related to the criminology. The data provides the basic
knowledge of different designs and special feature like tool
marks and mechanism used in there design(4-6).
II. MATERIAL AND METHOD
A. Material
Before the fabrication of the geometry of barrel we have to
select the material for the fabrication and analysis of the barrel
design. Normally there are two materials which are mainly use
for the fabrication of the barrel. These two material are used
by the U.S. military for the fabrication of the barrel i.e. AISI
4140, UNS S41600.
UNS S41600 is mostly used for the fabrication of the
aircraft components because of their mechanical properties.
The material is very expensive in its cost as well as the
machining cost is also very high. This particular material is
only used for the weapon designing and fabrication only when
specially designed weapon are ordered. Because of that the
production plants of the firearm facility mostly use the AISI
4140 material for the mass production. This material is used
because of its ability to withstand the (360 MPa to 560 MPa)
pressure ranges of the explosive used and because of its low
cost compared to the UNS S41600 material.
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Mechanical Engineering (NCASEme-2016)
But while generating homemade firearm people generally behavior of the 3D model is described in section III analysis
use cheap steel tubes, water pipes and discarded steel material and results.
of automobile, which are very weak in their fabrication as well
B. Method
as in their mechanical properties. Due to the weak design the
weapon, the firearm itself, becomes more dangerous to the The whole fabrication of the firearm is always based on its
weapon holder. This paper deals with the behavior exhibited internal barrel chamber drawings and the length of the barrel.
by the material when specified load and boundary conditions Some of the firearms are capable of using different size and
have been applied. shape of ammunition as per their requirement in the field.
1) Material properties The barrel chamber drawings may differ on the basis of the
Before conducting this study it is important to find out what bullet shell used in the firearms like shotgun shells and the
are the chemical components used to create these particular regular rounds or the training ammunitions. The selected
14.5x 114 mm (0.57 caliber) bullet design is used for the
materials for the fabrication of the gun barrel. The table I
fabrication of the barrel chamber of the gun. The particular
provide the chemical composition of the material in
bullet was chosen because it was used in the long range
percentage to compare with each other. In this particular study shooting rifles.
there are three different grades of steel. All the three materials
are steel alloys contain iron, sulfur, molybdenum, carbon, Fig. 1. 14.5 x 114 mm bullet dimension
chromium, manganese, silicon, phosphorus in their
composition.
The amounts of the chemical component are shown in
percentage value in the table. As the earlier studies indicate
that the chemical composition plays an important role in the
material selection process. Physical properties are also
considered as the important part of the material selection
process. During the working condition, the material
experience different kinds of load on it which leads to its
failure. There are many other properties which are generally
considered while selecting a material for the fabrication
purpose. Some of the properties are shown in the table (II).

TABLE I. COMPOSITION
Material name UNS S41600 AISI 4140 Structural Steel
Component (%)
C 0.15 0.40 0.15
Mn 1.25 0.85 1.25 As per the official guidelines of the bullet the shoulder
S 0.15 0.020 0.15 angle is approximately equal to 44.500. And its rifling twist is
Si 1.0 0.35 1.0 given as 455mm (1 in 17.91 in). The maximum pressure that
P 0.06 0.015 0.060
can be handled by the shell of the bullet is given as 360 MPa
Cr 12-14 1.0 12-14
and the case capacity of the shell is given as 42.53cm3 (656.3
grains H2O). The case length is 114 mm and the maximum
TABLE II. MATERIAL PROPERTIES
diameter of the shell is 26.96 mm as per the diagram shown in
fig 1.
Material Name UNS AISI 4140 Structural Units
Property S41600 Steel 1) Design
Density 7800 7850 7850 Kg/m3 The 3D model of the barrel was created using the
Elastic modulus 200 190-210 200 GPa Solidworks (2013). This software package was selected
Yield strength 795 770 255 MPa because of its easy interface and availability . All the
Elongation 13 17 22 % dimension of the model was given in in millimetres. Due to
Tensile strength 1000 930 410 MPa
Hardness 321 275 262 Hb
the non-arability of the exact dimension of the barrel coincides
in this study a simple model of a gun barrel has been designed.
The dimensions of the model are given in the fig. (2)[7], [8].
The length of the barrel was taken 1120 mm as per the
As shown in the table II we clearly identify that the most specification given by the “Vidhwansak” model. Vidhwansak
suitable material for the fabrication purpose is UNS S41600. model was originally designed by Ordnance Factory
But the homemade firearms are generally made up of cheap Tiruchirappalli in 2005 [31].The internal radius of the barrel
steal.so this research was performed by selecting the structural is 9.24 mm. The inner and outer shoulder angles which are
steel for the fabrication purpose of the solid model. The main commonly defined as alpha are 44.50o and 78.44o respectively.
reason of this research work is to find out the effects produced The barrel wall thickness was taken 20.32 mm. The reduction
on the barrel design which is made up of structural steel. The in barrel thickness was not considered along the length.

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Mechanical Engineering (NCASEme-2016)
view. Where as in the fig. (4). an isometric view of the of the
gun barrel model was shown.
Fig. 2. Design dimensions

2) Meshing
It is important to transfer the geometry to the different
software for the simulation of the problem given to it. For this
study ANSYS software package was used to simulate the
results of the given problem. ANSYS is a finite element
analysis package that can be used for the optimization of the
problem in real time as well as problem solving for the future
work. The geometry file are then converted to the standard
(.igs) IGES file and imparted to ANSYS geometry .after
importing the files to the geometry file we have to provide the
material to the engineering file as well. As we are using the
structural steel, it is a default material present in the software
package. After providing data to the software the geometry
will exhibits the same characteristics as the structural steel
itself.
Fig. 3. Top and side view of 3D model Mathematically, mesh can be defined as the procedure of
analyzing the structure or model by subdividing the model into
very fine and finite number of elements of simple shape. The
shapes can be tetrahedral, conical, cubical etc. Hear default
mesh generation settings are selected for the research work.
The main purpose of the meshing is to simplify the problem
by dividing the model into small element of simple shape and
size[9]. These simple shapes experience the same effect as the
whole model is going to experience. By using small size
Top view elements it is easy to calculate the values on these types of
shapes as compare to the whole geometry. The values obtain
are then arranged in the specific array formation which are
further calculated by the mathematical formula to obtain the
result for the whole model[10], [11].

Fig. 5. Mesh generation

Front view

Fig. 4. Isometric view of gun barrel model

The side view and the top view of a gun barrel model is shown
in fig. (3).as the pictures clearly show a slot was provided for
the breach loading mechanism to work properly in the top

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Mechanical Engineering (NCASEme-2016)
A mesh model generated by the ANSYS work bench was provided to the model. The movement was fixed at 0 mm in x-
shown in fig. (5). the mesh generation setting has been axis and free in both y-axis and z-axis.
selected as default. Few of the setting are show in the table III.

Fig. 6. Magnifing image of mesh generated

Fig. 7. Boundary condition

Displacement boundary condition

A magnifying image of the section of the gun barrel has

been shown in the fig. 6. As it clearly shows the mesh was
automatically generated to each and every part of the
model.

TABLE III. MESH SETTINGS

Setting detail Setting status

Use advance size Pressure boundary condition
Off
function
Revalance center Coarse
Whereas for the secondary boundary condition, we select
Span angle center Coarse pressure command which is normal to the plane. The pressure
Minimum edge length 8.6689e-002 mm limit provided was 360 MPa because of the bullet condition as
mention earlier. A chamber pressure versus time graph was
Maximum layer 5 represented in fig .
Growth rate 1.2 Fig. 8. Chamber pressure versus Time
Nodes 9684

Elements 5277

The Table III was used to provide the mesh setting used
during the mesh generation and problem solving. The program
creates 9684 nodes and 5277 elements. Whereas the growth
rate was considered to be 1.2.

3) Boundry condition

Boundary conditions are the commands provided by the user

to replicate the external environment around the model. And
to provide the basic information for the software to implement
the loading condition to the 3D model generated. In this study
two boundary conditions are used. First is a support condition A sectional view of the gun barrel is represented with the
which provides a support to the 3D model and the other is load pressure boundary condition in the fig 7.
condition which provides the different types of loads and
forces to the solid model[12]. In the study sis two boundary
conditions are used. First of all displacement support was

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Mechanical Engineering (NCASEme-2016)
III. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The analysis was performed using the ANSYS software
package. It is a FEA software package used to analyze
different types of models and mechanical component. It is
used to find out what behavior they exhibit under different
kinds of loads and boundary conditions. The study have
consider the Total Deformation, equivalent (von-misses)
stress, and maximum principal stress developed in the gun
barrel, with the help of the FE analysis tool the result are
shown in fig. 8, 9 and 10 respectively.
The total deformation has been shown in the fig 8. It is clear
from the image that the maximum total deformatiomof the
model was obtain at the two edge of the tube , where as
minimum deformation was obtain at the centtoid of the gun
barrel model.the bending of the model was started from the
cavity part created for the breach loading mechanism. In other
words the deformation starts because there is not enough Fig. 11. Maximum principal elastic strain
material present to provide strength to the model. The
maximum deformation was shown by red colour and and is
3.94 mm as its maximum value where as minimum the
minimum of the total deformation is 0.08mm and is
represented in blue colour.

Fig. 9. Total deformation

In case of the maximum principal elastic strain .it is clear

from the image that the maximum strain was found at the neck
of the gun barrel chamber. The maximum calculated strain
was 3.47e-003 and is represented by the red color. The strain
reduces from the inner wall to outer wall the minimum strain
calculated was 2.66e-006 and represented by blue color in fig.
10.
While calculating equivalent stress (von misses) it was found IV. CONCLUSION
that the outer surface of the model was at lower stress, but the
inner wall of the tube reaches above 800.68 MPa but still
In this paper solid model of a gun barrel has been generated
below the maximum value of the equivalent stress 936.66
using Solidworks 2013 software package and ANSYS 15.0
MPa and is represented by the red color. The minimum
has been used for finite element analysis of the gun barrel.
equivalent stress is 1.74 MPa and represented by the blue
For the current paper analysis, structural steel was used. The
color. By comparing the von messis value with the yielding
loading conditions are mentioned in literature. The result
strength it is clear that the design has f. The analysis is shown
obtained clearly indicates the failure of the model. The results
in fig. 9.
have been compared with the values available in the literature.
Fig. 10. Equivalent (von- misses) stress

V. SCOPE OF FUTURE WORK

Gun barrel design may be improved to avoid failure by
either altering the design geometry or by using different
material. While using metal for the fabrication of a firearm
component the assembly becomes heavy instead of using

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Mechanical Engineering (NCASEme-2016)
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