Artillery Gun Recoil Measurement Using High-Speed Imaging and Image Processing Technique

The recoil of an artillery gun system is the rearward movement of the ordnance on firing relative to the mounting or carriage. Recoil system is an assembly which is designed to control the recoil force acting on the gun by absorbing the recoil energy smoothly at a convenient distance and returning it back to the original position. It provides dynamic stability to the gun. Assessment of recoil system is of paramount importance during gun design phase trial. Recoil length and recoil velocity are the parameters help in assessing the recoil system. Traditionally recoil length is measured with the help of calibrated plate which is attached at the lower plate of the structure and a recoil velocity of an artillery gun is measured with the help of LVDT. These methods are contact-based methods. Here in this work, we have presented a non-contact, high-speed imaging based method to measure the recoil length and recoil velocity. In this method, two quadrant markers with known separation distance and diameter are pasted on the barrel before the firing. High-speed camera with proper optics is placed perpendicular to the ordinance at pre-calculated offset distance. The camera is calibrated with the help ofknown distance between two quadrant markers. Recoil phenomena are captured with the help of a high-speed camera which, in turn, is triggered by a flash detector. After firing, suitable image and video processing methods are used to process the acquired video of recoil phenomena and various recoil parameters are measured. In this work, we have provided the detail of experimental setup, calibration method and various image and video processing methods used for measuring the parameter. This method can be applied to small to high caliber artillery gun recoil system assessment.