Artillery Rocket Kinetic Energy Rod Warhead Packaging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current munition packaging techniques for artillery rockets with kinetic energy (KE) rods are inefficient, leading to random orientations and damage during dispensing, resulting in reduced effectiveness and increased assembly costs, as well as potential fratricidal impacts and environmental hazards from unexploded ordnance.
Innovation Solution
A novel packaging arrangement using pre-assembled wedge-shaped packs of KE rods secured by a retaining band, which are dispensed in a well-defined radial pattern via a skin severance system utilizing flexible linear shaped charges, eliminating the need for foam packs and ensuring rods maintain orientation and contact with the tier pack bulkheads.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If KE rods are placed directly into the rocket warhead bay, then assembly is simple, but rods are dispensed in random orientations and quickly lose velocity and lethality due to air drag
Solution Approach 1:
The rod payload is segmented into modular wedge-shaped packs, each containing multiple rods in a predetermined orientation. This segmentation allows simple assembly of the packs into the warhead bay while ensuring each pack maintains rod orientation during dispense, resolving the contradiction between assembly simplicity and orientation control.
Solution Approach 2:
The KE rods are pre-assembled into wedge-shaped packs with predetermined orientations before being loaded into the rocket. This preliminary action ensures that when the packs are dispensed, the rods maintain their correct orientation immediately upon exit, eliminating the need for complex in-flight orientation control mechanisms.
2Strength
If foam packs are used to hold KE rods, then rods are protected during transport, but the explosive forces needed to break up the foam packs cause many rods to be damaged during dispense
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces rigid foam packs with flexible fabric bags to hold the KE rods. These fabric containers provide protection during transport while being easily breakable by the dispense explosive force, thus protecting rods during transport without causing damage during dispense.
Solution Approach 2:
The fabric bags are designed as disposable containers that serve their protective function during transport and then easily break apart during dispense. This disposable approach eliminates the need for durable, hard-to-break containers that would protect rods too vigorously during dispense.
3Device complexity
If foam packs are used to dispense KE rods, then rods are contained, but rods are dispensed in random orientations and foam fragments damage rods or disturb their orientation
Solution Approach 1:
Flexible fabric bags replace rigid foam packs as the containment structure. These bags can be easily broken by dispense forces without creating damaging fragments, and they allow the rods within to maintain their predetermined orientations during the dispense process.
Solution Approach 2:
Rods are pre-positioned in their final orientations within the fabric bags before loading into the warhead. This preliminary orientation ensures that when the bags break during dispense, the rods are already in the correct orientation and do not require additional orientation control mechanisms.
4Area of stationary object
If cluster munitions are dispersed widely, then coverage area is increased, but the violent dispense event damages rods and creates fratricidal impacts
Solution Approach 1:
The payload is segmented into multiple wedge-shaped packs distributed throughout the warhead bay. This segmentation allows the packs to be dispersed widely for area coverage while each pack's internal structure maintains rod orientation, preventing fratricidal impacts between rods from different packs.
Solution Approach 2:
Each wedge pack is pre-configured with rods in predetermined orientations that account for the dispense trajectory. This preliminary orientation ensures that even when packs are dispersed widely across the target area, the rods maintain effective orientations and do not collide with rods from other packs.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution reduces assembly costs, enhances terminal performance by minimizing rod damage and fratricide, and achieves a predictable, repeatable pattern of KE rods over the target area, eliminating unexploded ordnance and environmental contamination.
Implementation Method 1
a skin severance system utilizing flexible linear shaped charges
Implementation Method 2
The explosive bursting charge is black powder contained in a plastic cylinder
Implementation Method 3
They are secured by a retaining band that is severed during the skin severance event
Data Source
AI summary
A KE rod warhead for artillery rockets contains a multiplicity of KE rod penetrators housed in trays and packaged into bays or tier packs that are stacked and positioned around a center column of the warhead. The warhead has a skin which is severed upon the rocket entering a target area. The KE rods are situated and housed in such a manner that upon release the rods experience a minimum of pitching or tumbling upon entering the air stream giving the rods an optimal lethality against a designated target. The KE rod artillery rocket contains no explosive munitions, so it can be used without civilian and environmental concerns over unexploded ordnance.