The two video clips below show a Russian T-90 tank firing its 125mm. cannon. The camera is said to be filming at 18,000 frames per second, which gives it amazingly good resolution of the muzzle blast, the departure of the shell, and the aftermath. (Of course, when transferred to video, the encoding rate doesn’t match the frame rate, so we don’t see that full resolution here.) Once the shell’s out of frame, the rest of each clip – a minute or so – is nothing but the dissipation of the smoke and blast, which can be a bit boring: but I guess for designers of such weapons, such high-resolution footage provides important information.
Engrossing footage, if a bit chilling to think of what that shell would do to anyone or anything downrange . . .
Peter
It's also interesting how little recoil there is in the barrel after firing! It's not until they go to load the next round that the barrel comes off horizontal!
My friend Chuck did field service for a company that made chemical mixing equipment. One of their best customers was a munitions plant where they used the mixing equipment to prepare propellant and warhead charges for artillery shells.
They had a box set up on the test range with a high speed camera inside, and they could shoot a shell through the box and get a picture of it in flight. They knew the ballistics and spin of the ammo very well well. To impress visitors they'd write the visitor's name on the round, load it up, and fire it through the box. The name would be visible to the camera as the shell went by, and they'd give a copy of the photo to the visitor. They did that for Chuck, and he showed it to me.
Chuck claimed he'd never die from artillery fire because the "bullet with his name on it" had already been fired.
Dave H: That's one hell of an impressive demo idea!
Just guessing here as I know this >< much about artillery and such, but all that continuing combustion outside the barrel looks, to me, like a waste of propellant. Or maybe the propellant is burning too slowly?