Student: Caleb J. Petersen Faculty Sponsor: Dr.

David Beale 7/31/13 Undergraduate Research/Enrichment Proposal Continuous Recoil Absorber

Table of Contents
Abstract. ............................................................................................................................................................. 3 About the Researcher. ................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction to Proposal. ............................................................................................................................. 5 Proposal. ............................................................................................................................................................ 9 Appendix I. Drawings of Weapons, Before and After Proposed Modifications. ...................... 11 Appendix II. MATLAB Code for Generating Theoretical Rack Centrode from Pinion Centrode. .......................................................................................................................................................... 12

Abstract. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop a process to configure a recoil-mitigating system that can be added to an existing weapon without modifying the action and will employ a non-linear rack and pinion to vary the effective stiffness opposing recoiling parts (principally bolt and bolt carrier and possibly piston), thereby distributing the recoil force over time to make it significantly less jarring. An easy-to-model weapon currently in use by a branch of the US Military will be selected for modelling in SolidWorks. Internal ballistics data will be calculated with tabulated information or QuickLOAD internal ballistics software. Then, pre-modification recoil of the weapon will be quantified in MSC ADAMS rigid-body dynamics software, based upon the internal ballistics data and the SolidWorks CAD model. Then, a gradual retardation scheme for the bolt's rearward movement that does not slow down the weapon's rate of fire or magnify counter-recoil forces will be developed, and from this force profile and interactions with springs as computed in MATLAB or ADAMS will be developed the ideal pinion centrode. The rack to mate with it will be generated by the researcher's already-developed MATLAB code. Finally, the recoil buffer will be assembled in a buttstock package in SolidWorks, and the entire system will be verified to ensure reduced muzzle climb. The process should be adaptable to guns of diverse sizes and firing characteristics in later research.

About the Researcher. Caleb Petersen is a senior undergraduate student in mechanical engineering at Auburn University. He is the recipient of Auburn's generous Presidential Scholarship and wishes to use Enrichment Experience money towards research that will not only teach him advanced concepts in engineering design and simulation but also prepare him for a possible career at Aberdeen Proving Grounds designing weaponry for the US Military and allies. Caleb will attempt to build upon his strengths with computers by focusing on various simulation methodologies as applied to this research platform, especially rigid-body dynamics as simulated with MSC ADAMS and various finite element analyses in ANSYS Workbench. He has taught himself elements of non-linear gear theory and already developed MATLAB code relating a pinion of known centrode to the centrode of its unique rack, studying such works as Gear Geometry and Applied Theory by Faydor Litvin. He is also familiar with the principles of operation of relevant firearms, having read the few overviews thereof available in English, including Brassey's Essential Guide to Military Small Arms : Design Principles and Operating Methods by Popelinsky et. al. His coursework should be sufficiently light in Fall 2013 to allow completion of the project before graduating then. He will work closely with Auburn Professor David Beale, who is especially knowledgeable in the areas of dynamic simulations and optimization design and who is fortunately connected to mechanical researchers for the US Military, including through a vibration analysis project for same that he has recently undertaken.

Introduction to Proposal. Mitigating any recoil not actively harnessed by a gun system has always been an important concern for designers of gun systems of all sorts, from man-portable rifles to the largest howitzers. Light-infantry weapons fired from the shoulder, such as assault rifles and machine guns, merely suffer reduced accuracy if recoil is significant; however, larger gun systems mounted rigidly to tripods or vehicles can suffer structural damage if recoil is not adequately compensated for or distributed over time. As America finds itself in wars of ever-decreasing scale, its soldiers tend to need increased controllability in their weapons to avoid friendly fire and civilian casualties. However, the simplest means of reducing felt recoil in shoulder-fired weapons, simply increasing the weight of the gun in question, is inefficient as the detrimental effects of this change upon weapon maneuverability and soldier stamina tend to outweigh the benefits of reduced muzzle climb from recoil. With heavier weapon systems affixed to rigid mounts, the current recoil-related problem is less pressing but still nontrivial: recoil sleeves must usually be employed, in which the entire weapon is fired at rest (or even with some forward movement) and allowed to travel rearwards. After the heavy weapon has started to recoil rearward inside its recoil sleeve, it must be stopped suddenly by the discontinuous and stiff action of a buffer that imparts a relatively impulsive force to its mounting, or it must be allowed to recoil over an impractical distance, being stopped continuously but slowly by a linear spring-damper system. The rearward movement of the weapon must be synchronized to firing to avoid accumulation of momentum while in motion. The problem of recoil in shoulder-fired weapons is surely the more pressing of the two, as the combat effectiveness of heavy machine guns that have simplistic recoil mounts could only be increased slightly with a change in mounting that allowed for higher rates of fire without risking instability, whereas infantry weapons could be rendered more accurate and controllable and less fatiguing to use. Weapon recoil can actually be harnessed to complete the cycle (whereas most small arms, particularly those employed by the US military, employ energy obtained by tapping from inside the barrel behind

the bullet), although this would be incompatible with US military weapons, thus necessitating years of redesign that might soon be rendered obsolete by the advent of a new type of military cartridge (caseless ammunition). Moreover, recoil-operated designs are rarely favored not only because of the great difficulty of manufacture they entail and reduced reliability with respect to changes in ammunition characteristics, but also because they have jarring counter-recoil strokes that produce the same loss in accuracy their novel features are intended to obviate. Modifying actions also has serious practical concerns, namely the high cost and waste inherent in replacing functional weapon systems (for which the US Military would no doubt reject any such proposal, no matter how effective), and the researcher considers any task touching upon actions to be too difficult for this assignment in any case. Instead of in any way altering the basic function and reinforced, load-bearing parts of the weapon, it is proposed to simply replace the current operating spring and buffer unit that currently attach to bolts in various weapons with a mechanism that develops a non-linear force profile with respect to bolt travel. The mechanism will consist of a rack and pinion of a special class quite distinct from the rack and pinions with which most engineers are familiar: although the pinion only rotates about a fixed point whilst the rack only translates along a fixed axis, the transmission ratio between the two varies according to the profile of the pinion (each pinion has a unique rack, whose profile depends upon the pinion's centrode and its teeth). The author of this research proposal has already studied this intriguing class of mechanisms under Dr. Beale's tutelage for Senior Design and has developed MATLAB codes (included in Appendix II) to first generate the centrode for a proposed pinion and then, given the profile of the pinion's centrode, compute the velocity with which the rack will translate at any point in the mechanism's movement. This allows one to produce a profile of the rack by employing a semi-automatic SolidWorks macro in conjunction with ADAMS simulation code built into SolidWorks. An example of a non-linear rack and pinion is shown in Figure 1; note that this profile is one that the researcher used in a different project and does not even have the general shape desired, let alone an optimum profile. The translating rack should be connected to the weapon's bolt, and the rotating pinion

should engage a torsional spring attached to the stock of the weapon. A drawing of the most common action in use in various US Military weapons is included in Appendix I, as is a schematic of the proposed modifications. The principle advantage of this proposed system is that the spring force can vary non-linearly in accordance with the optimum force profile; even though the spring will have a constant stiffness, the novel rack and pinion to be developed will give the effect of a virtual spring of changing stiffness. In particular, it is anticipated that the effect of the mechanism should be to produce a stiff resistance to bolt rearward travel at the beginning of the cycle, when the bolt is under maximum force from cartridge blowback effects and gas actuation, but that this stiffness should decline to an extent to allow the bolt to travel rearward enough to complete its ejection and feeding functions. Most importantly, the bolt will be stopped gradually by this spring mechanism, whereas in practically every current weapon of any size, the bolt is stopped discontinuously and sharply by a stiff buffer at the end of its travel. It is this sudden force that contributes to felt recoil and muzzle climb for the soldier; a constant, soft force (of the same ultimate impulse in accordance with the Law of Conservation of Momentum) but distributed over much more time is far more manageable. The proposed modification will also reduce recoil somewhat by virtue of the added mass of recoiling parts since the rack must translate. It will even be possible to orient the non-linear pinion in such a way as to cause its rotation to contribute somewhat to the counterbalancing of the weapon's recoil. Ultimately, the ideal profile for a given weapon system will be determined through dynamic, rigid-body analysis aided by internal ballistics information for the cartridge, and strength of materials analysis will be performed to ensure that the mechanism can withstand the dynamic forces to which it will be subjected.

Figure 1: Example of Non-Linear Rack and Pinion. For Counterclockwise Rotation of the Blue Pinion about the Hole, the Green Rack Translates Leftwards by a Varying Ratio in the Direction of the CutOut Arrow. Created by Caleb Petersen with Special Algorithm.

Proposal. The researcher proposes to develop a 3D model of the proposed recoil-mitigating assembly for a weapon that it would be most beneficial to American soldiers to render more controllable. Thus, the weapon's major components must be modeled with representative geometry and mass, even though they will not be modified in CAD given the technical problems of redesigning existing weapons (and logistical difficulties of adopting such changes that the Armed Forces would face). Using internal ballistics data, either tabulated for a given cartridge or computed using the state-of-the-art QuickLOAD internal ballistics program, the rearward force upon the weapon will be calculated over time. In turn, it will be feasible to calculate the effective recoil impulse upon the shooter by programming the aforementioned force data into an MSC ADAMS dynamic simulation of the modeled weapon. From this information the force-time profile of the bolt will be analyzed to yield the ideal means of stopping it with the novel mechanism considered above. It will then be necessary to generate the rack and pinion profile, and then a buttstock assembly must be developed incorporating the rack, pinion, and spring into a compact package. Finally, a unified model of the entire proposed weapon system will be simulated with rigid-body dynamics to ensure performance. Explicit finite element analysis will be employed to ensure that no spring surging occurs when components are accelerating rapidly; it may also be used in the event dynamic impacts occur, although these are to be minimized as they contribute to felt recoil. Thus, each stage of the design process entails state-of-the-art computer simulation, and the overall workflow is dominated by original design (with a modicum of adaptive design likely required for buttstock ergonomics and collapsing functions). It will not be necessary to produce a physical prototype of the modified buttstock at this point as all relevant alpha stage concerns can be addressed with computer simulations. Indeed, it is expected that the results will yield a promising working concept that can be patented and sold to the American military for further refinement and adaptation to new weapon systems. Physical testing will be in any event impossible due to the difficulty of manufacturing a single buttstock of complex shape without

large-scale manufacturing capabilities, let alone gaining access to one of the highly-restricted weapons previously just simulated to install the invention. The researcher may, however, procure a 3D print in ABS plastic of the recoil mechanism to present his invention most impressively to prospective employers and those who might adopt and expand upon his idea.

Appendix I. Drawings of Weapons, Before and After Proposed Modifications.

Figure 2: Overall Weapon Before Modification

Figure 3: Close-Up of Buttstock with Continuous Recoil Absorber

Appendix II. MATLAB Code for Generating Theoretical Rack Centrode from Pinion Centrode.
%Given an Excel file with the centrode of the pinion represented by polar %coordinates with the center of rotation of same the origin of the %coordinate system, calculate the theoretical rack centrode theoretically. %The numbers and files referenced herein were for another project %Caleb Petersen used this code for. This code is not terribly useful as %the tooth profile required for the rack to mate with involute-style teeth %on the pinion is not given. Thus, the next MATLAB script is preferred for %developing the CAD model of the rack. % %Author: Caleb Petersen data=xlsread('gear spline.xls'); theta=data(:,1); r = data(:,2); kappa_1=.1*pi/360; %[[1/m]] or similar kappa_2=1/120; %[[1/s]] kappa_3=1e-9; %Constant of proportionality for rack and pinion; [[s/m]], etc. ksi_a=10; %[[m]] Starting nondimensionalized point of integration, >0. ksi_b=1200; %[[m]] Ending nondimensionalized point of integration, <+Inf. ksi_vector = linspace(ksi_a,ksi_b,100); figure(1) polar(theta,r) poly=spline(theta,r); r_ksi = @(ksi) ppval(poly,ksi)*kappa_3; phi_ksi = @(ksi) kappa_1 * (ksi - ksi_a); %Find x2 in the range from ksi_a to ksi_b i=1; while i<=length(ksi_vector) x_2(i) = kappa_1 * integral(r_ksi,ksi_a,ksi_vector(i)); %x_2(i) = kappa_1 * integral(r_ksi,ksi_vector(i-1),ksi_vector(i)) + x_2(i-1); i=i+1; end %Find y2 in the range. i=1; while i<=length(ksi_vector) y_2(i) = r_ksi(ksi_vector(i)) - r_ksi(ksi_a); i=i+1; end figure(2) plot(x_2,y_2) %Plot pinion too. hold on x_1=r_ksi(ksi_vector) .* cos(phi_ksi(ksi_vector)); y_1=r_ksi(ksi_vector) .* sin(phi_ksi(ksi_vector)); plot(x_1,y_1,'r') plot(1/kappa_2*cos([0:.1:2*pi]),1/kappa_2*sin([0:.1:2*pi]),'y') theta_rack = atan(x_2./y_2); theta_rack(1)=0; r_rack = sqrt(x_2.^2 + y_2.^2); figure(1) polar(theta,r,theta_rack,r_rack,'g')

Appendix III. MATLAB Code for Velocity of Rack for Constant Angular Velocity of Pinion.
%Given some coordinates in Excel of the centrode of the pinion, generates %the displacement of the rack at various points of rotation of the pinion %assuming a constant angular velocity of the latter. This translational %displacement is outputted to a CSV file that SolidWorks can use in Motion %analysis, and then the profile of the rack can easily be produced by Caleb %Petersen's macro. Note that the displacement of the rack is assumed by a %non-slip condition with the pinion. Also, SolidWorks can interpolate the %displacement values into velocity and acceleration of the rack, but it is %better to calculate these with contact analysis due to the magnification %of inaccuracies that numerical differentiation entails. %Author: Caleb Petersen clear all clc hold on data=xlsread('pitch spline good.xls'); %Imports data on centrode of pinion. % Teeth not considered. %Phi and r values of pinion's centrode about point of rotation. phi=data(:,2)*pi/180; r = data(:,1); polar(phi,r) %Displays pinion's centrode for verification. dphi=.5*pi/180; %[[rad]]. Pinion rotates by .5deg every "second". phiphi=phi(1):dphi:phi(length(phi)); %All allowable rotations from initial % position for pinion. poly=spline(phi,r); %Generate curvature-continuous spline based on centrode. rinterp=ppval(poly,phiphi); %Pitch circle for pinion by spline % interpolation - more accurate than Excel data! % x = 3.52964; % r0=-2.24128; phi1(1)=0; %Find the phi that my starting r corresponds to. i_phi0 = min(find(phiphi>pi/2)); i=1; fprintf('Starting phi found to be %1.5f[[rad]] for r of %2.4f.\n',phiphi(i_phi0),rinterp(i_phi0)) totalds=0; matrix=[]; t=0; phirotd=0; dt=1; %[[sec/step]] theta=0; %Angle through which gear has rotated over time. while -i+i_phi0>=0 ds(i) = rinterp(i_phi0-i) * dphi; %[[in]]=[[in]]*[[rad]] %ds is change of rack's position at every timestep. %rinterp(-i+i_phi0) gives radius of pinion centrode that is in contact %with the rack at any step. t(i+1)=t(i)+dt; %Advances timestep. totalds(i+1)=totalds(i)+ds(i); %totalds is total translation of rack from initial position. % phiphi(i_phi0-i); % phiphi(i_phi0-i)*180/pi;

theta(i+1)=theta(i) - .5; %Theta is rotation completed by pinion at any time step. matrix=[matrix;ds(i),totalds(i),rinterp(-i+i_phi0),t(i)]; %"matrix" is for convenient display in MATLAB command window. i=i+1; end fprintf('ds\t\ttotalds\t\trinterp\t\tt\n') %Headings in "matrix" csvwrite('greatprofile.csv',[t',totalds']) %Produces a CSV file for SW.