REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

www.mod.gov.rs

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

Material Resources Sector

Defensive Technologies Department

Military Technical Institute

www.vti.mod.gov.rs

using active damping as a precision enhancing technology for 128 mm artillery rockets with increased range

Bojan pavković

Military Technical Institute, Belgrade, bjnpav@gmail.com

miloš pavić

Military Technical Institute, Belgrade, carlazar@beotel.rs

danilo ćuk

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Belgrade, cukd@eunet.rs

Abstract: Artillery rockets are used on the battlefield for indirect fire on distant targets. As they have large impact point dispersion, they are considered to be area weapons and are fired from multi tube launchers. Achieving high hit probability requires spending of a vast number of rockets. Applying a control system, it is possible to reduce their impact point dispersion and increase the hit probability. Active damping control system with pulsejets as control mechanism is simple, inexpensive and efficient enough to achieve the dispersion reduction which justifies their application. This paper presents performances of such a system applied on a hypothetic 128 mm artillery rocket with the range of 32 km. As the active damping control system cannot compensate the most influential disturbance for artillery rockets precision – deviation of the rocket motor total impulse, reduction of the hit point dispersion achieved using this system is presented for various deviations of that parameter as a function of the range,. Simulation of a 6-degrees-of-freedom mathematical model is used with Monte Carlo technique as the tool for analysis.

Key words: Artillery rockets, Active damping, Impulse control, Pulsejets, Hit points dispersion.