Abstract There is anisotropy in 30SiMn2MoVA steel gun barrel processed by radial forging which results in the low service life of the gun barrel. While the texture is the main reason for the anisotropy. The crystal plasticity finite element (CPFE) method is usually used to simulate the microstructure and the texture of the metal. In the present work, a two-dimensional polycrystalline finite element model based on electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) experiment data is developed to represent virtual grain structures of polycrystalline 30SiMn2MoVA steel. The displacement of nodes in the macro radial forging process finite element model is used as the cross-scale boundary condition in the CPFE model which realizes cross-scale simulation. The texture evolution and inhomogeneous deformation of 30SiMn2MoVA steel in the radial forging processing under three different forging ratios were simulated. The simulated texture results are consistent with the experimental results. The inhomogeneous deformation of grains is obvious and will intensify with the increase of the forging ratio. The distributions of stress and equivalent plastic strain in polycrystals are statistically Gaussian. With the increase of deformation, the further refinement of grains is due to the large shear strain in large grains.

Abstract This work focused on the stress response of anisotropic 30SiMn2MoVA steel gun barrel under coupled thermo-mechanical loads, namely, the contact pressure and friction of projectile, thermal load and pressure of propellant gas. The effect of temperature on the mechanical properties of gun barrel was considered. Two thermal-displacement coupled finite element models (FEM) were built by ABAQUS software. The first was the interaction model of projectile and barrel which was to calculate the stress of barrel engraved by copper jacket and steel jacket projectile. The results of barrel in the interaction model, as an initial condition, were imported to the second FEM which was applied with thermal load and pressure of propellant gas. The results show that the rifling at chamber throat has the largest stress and circumferential stress under coupled loads. It gives a request that the gun barrel should have the better circumferential mechanical properties. The plastic deformation of the rifling at the chamber throat is observed which indicates that 30SiMn2MoVA gun barrel has a low service life due to the poor mechanical properties.