Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Essentially, how many "the future of tank design" systems are physically possible to combine, and just how reasonable to do so may they be? The particular systems I'm aware of off the top of my head:
1. Railguns: Right-angle circuit formed by conductive lines within the barrel creates a linear motor from induced opposing magnetic fields. Relatively straightforward to engineer and scales directly with available current, but limited by power supplies and contact erosion by friction.
2. Coilguns: Accelerates the projectile by use of electromagnets to attract a projectile, typically ferromagnetic but can utilize induced current and with sufficient precision a superconducting coil riding a "wave". Scales with magnetic flux and avoids classical erosion modes, but much more complex to engineer due to timing of coils.
3. Rarefaction wave gun: Utilizes breech openings to create a secondary wave caused by the reduction of density, arranged to turn the loss of pressure into a near-equal secondary propulsion force. Allows for far lighter systems from reduction of internal pressure and heating load, but introduces backblast concerns that prevent a fully-enclosed turret during firing and requires considerably higher mechanical precision to get the forces to align correctly.
4. Electrothermal chemical propellant: Improves propellant combustion regularity by using plasma as the igniter instead of an impact-sensitive explosive. This improves the propellant expansion rate over traditional combustion propagation at much higher consistency and allows for higher ignition energy propellants not susceptible to typical magazine detonations, and can be added to existing platforms, but still adds a noticeable electrical system and attendant logistical support.
5. Combustion light-gas guns: Use of low molecular mass gasses allows for extremely high expansion velocities as the reactant matter is very light. This increases the propellant efficiency relative to heavier solid or liquid propellants thus allowing for increased muzzle velocities, but the combustion process is highly unreliable, abruptness of acceleration poses engineering difficulties to the projectile, and efficient storage of propellant typically entails cryogenic hardware.
6. Light-gas gun: Explosive charge propelling a piston in a compression chamber filled with light gasses such as hydrogen allows for highly efficient increase to extreme pressures with significant ongoing momentum, increased further by forcing it through a cone until its pressure ruptures a retaining disk to expose the projectile to extreme pressures. This allows for frankly ludicrous barrel pressure to accelerate to immense velocities, but the multi-stage nature of the system significantly complicates design and the reliance on chamber-bore diameter difference restricts it to larger-scale use.
I don't see much extra in the way for making a rarefaction wave gun use a solid electrothermal chemical propellant, possibly liquid ones depending on ability to manage retention via surface tension versus necessary offgassing.
This can in turn be used as the piston driver for a light-gas gun, in which the contents of the pump-tube could theoretically be a combustion light-gas system set off by either the compression heating or an electrical system.
From there, you'd likely see the rupture "disk" be the solid slug receiving tertiary propulsion energy from either a railgun or a coil gun, because those systems are pretty much solely a factor of a valid projectile and the barrel.
There are doubtlessly more practical to actually make lesser implementations, and likely systems I am unaware of to throw in the soup, but this seems a good start to the design work for 40k's Ordinatii.
1. Railguns: Right-angle circuit formed by conductive lines within the barrel creates a linear motor from induced opposing magnetic fields. Relatively straightforward to engineer and scales directly with available current, but limited by power supplies and contact erosion by friction.
2. Coilguns: Accelerates the projectile by use of electromagnets to attract a projectile, typically ferromagnetic but can utilize induced current and with sufficient precision a superconducting coil riding a "wave". Scales with magnetic flux and avoids classical erosion modes, but much more complex to engineer due to timing of coils.
3. Rarefaction wave gun: Utilizes breech openings to create a secondary wave caused by the reduction of density, arranged to turn the loss of pressure into a near-equal secondary propulsion force. Allows for far lighter systems from reduction of internal pressure and heating load, but introduces backblast concerns that prevent a fully-enclosed turret during firing and requires considerably higher mechanical precision to get the forces to align correctly.
4. Electrothermal chemical propellant: Improves propellant combustion regularity by using plasma as the igniter instead of an impact-sensitive explosive. This improves the propellant expansion rate over traditional combustion propagation at much higher consistency and allows for higher ignition energy propellants not susceptible to typical magazine detonations, and can be added to existing platforms, but still adds a noticeable electrical system and attendant logistical support.
5. Combustion light-gas guns: Use of low molecular mass gasses allows for extremely high expansion velocities as the reactant matter is very light. This increases the propellant efficiency relative to heavier solid or liquid propellants thus allowing for increased muzzle velocities, but the combustion process is highly unreliable, abruptness of acceleration poses engineering difficulties to the projectile, and efficient storage of propellant typically entails cryogenic hardware.
6. Light-gas gun: Explosive charge propelling a piston in a compression chamber filled with light gasses such as hydrogen allows for highly efficient increase to extreme pressures with significant ongoing momentum, increased further by forcing it through a cone until its pressure ruptures a retaining disk to expose the projectile to extreme pressures. This allows for frankly ludicrous barrel pressure to accelerate to immense velocities, but the multi-stage nature of the system significantly complicates design and the reliance on chamber-bore diameter difference restricts it to larger-scale use.
I don't see much extra in the way for making a rarefaction wave gun use a solid electrothermal chemical propellant, possibly liquid ones depending on ability to manage retention via surface tension versus necessary offgassing.
This can in turn be used as the piston driver for a light-gas gun, in which the contents of the pump-tube could theoretically be a combustion light-gas system set off by either the compression heating or an electrical system.
From there, you'd likely see the rupture "disk" be the solid slug receiving tertiary propulsion energy from either a railgun or a coil gun, because those systems are pretty much solely a factor of a valid projectile and the barrel.
There are doubtlessly more practical to actually make lesser implementations, and likely systems I am unaware of to throw in the soup, but this seems a good start to the design work for 40k's Ordinatii.