Hello
I'm a mechanical engineering student and I've been studying the internal ballistics of guns for the last 3 years, it was first just a hobby since I've always loved those big cannons from sci-fi movies and then I suddenly wanted to design my own big cannons. I'm currently making my thesis about the design of an artillery gun barrel and I found this forum when I was finding information about guns and gun design, I think this is an amazing community with a lot of useful information.
These are some drawings I made to explain my project to my professors:
Some months ago I designed a 4cm/61 gun barrel using the internal ballistics theories I've been studying with the design knowledge I have from my career and made a 3D model of it. It was just a testing design to see if everything was going well with theories I've been studying.
The last year I had the idea of developing an application using the knowledge of my thesis, which means that such app would give you the data needed to understand the internal ballistics of guns and of course, it should design the gun barrel too. I've been developing such application since April since I have free time because of the lockdown.
COCOBALISTICA
This one would be the first version of the application in English (version 1.0), I had already made a beta version for testing purposes but it was in Spanish only. The application lets you see some parameters like velocity of the projectile inside the gun, internal pressure, projectile twist velocity inside the gun, burning rate, etc... You can plot such parameters to see how they behave with more details too. Since my first language is Spanish, I made the application in Spanish and English, it also does have the US and International (metric) systems of measurement and it is possible to make conversions of units in case you want the results in the international system of measurement but you have the data in the US system of measurement.
COCOBALISTICA 1.0 Screenshots:
Youtube video using the application:
For now the application only gives you the internal ballistics data but I will keep developing it until it designs gun barrels, something I hope to achieve soon but first I will release another version adding some details and fixing possible errors of the version 1.0. I think it would be useful for the people who tends to visit this forum because I noticed you can cast your bullets and make your own powder, saving you lots of money but, what if you could design your own gun barrel for any caliber, powder and steel alloy? I want the application to give you enough information to design your own gun barrel for any projectile, caliber and powder using the alloy you want (not all alloys are strong enough to be used but this is something that the app will tell you)... You could save money from buying new barrels when the one you are using for your gun is already worn by making it by yourself if you have the machining tools needed for it and you would know the approximate barrel life.