Experimental investigation of heat conduction performance and development of automatic temperature measurement device on modular artillery charge system

• We construct a measurement system with real-time data collection function.
• We examine experimentally thermal performances of modular artillery charge system.
• We develop a non-contact automatic online temperature measurement device.
• A non-contact measurement method is proposed to obtain modular charge temperatures.

The heat conduction performance experiment is conducted on the modular artillery charge system (MACS). Utilizing the experimental measurement system, the change history of the modular charge temperature is obtained. On the basis of the heat conduction performance experiment of modular propellant charge, an unsteady-state heat conduction model describing the temperature change of the MACS is built and the finite-difference implicit schemes are theoretically deduced using the volume equilibrium method for numerical simulation. The validation of the numerical model is checked through compared with the experimental results. An automatic online temperature measurement device on the MACS is developed, based on the non-contact measurement method which is proposed in this paper. As a part of the device, an initial charge temperature sensor (ICTS) is also developed according to the similarity principle. The temperature measurement device where the numerical codes are embedded is assembled in the turret to calculation successively the temperature change of the modular charge with the environment temperature of ammunition rack. Meanwhile, for trajectory calculation and firing data correction, the temperature information obtained from the device may be simultaneously transferred to the gunner task terminal computer through a Controller Area Network (CAN) bus interface.