Purpose of the muzzle brake?

[Commissar]

Is it just to reduce the dust kicked up by the main gun or is there some other purpose?

[Gordon]

It's to help to reduce the recoil of the gun. Some of the propellant gases are vented backwards to help offset the recoil forces.

Actually more dust is usually kicked up with a muzzle brake than without it and can be detrimental to watching the round's flight (so as to adjust your targeting) and can reduce the tanks effective rate of fire.

Gordon

[MadmaN]

Using a muzzle brake puts more dust in the air.

EDIT: ahh posted same time

[This message has been edited by MadmaN (edited 04-03-2001).]

[StellarRat]

Some of the newer pistols even have muzzle brakes! They do reduce the recoil by about 25%, but man the volume of the shots is incredible! In a regular pistol the sound is projected forward, but a muzzle brake sends a lot of blast and sound right back at you! Of course I always wear ear plugs and muffs, but you sure can tell the difference.

[karch]

The more efficient the muzzle brake, the more of the blast is sent backwards.... at the crew or vehicle. Tanks can use very efficient muzzle brakes because the crew is safe inside the tank, but you won't find too many muzzle brakes, especiall of much effiecency on field guns. The backblast from the muzzle brake would be really dangerous to the crew. Especially from big guns.

For a really efficient brake of about 30%, 30% of the blast would be captured and sent backwards. That's a pretty hefty explosion going back towards the crew.

[Guest machineman]

From what I understand there is a bit of an art to designing a good one. Some muzzle brakes were much better than others, both at reducing recoil and at cutting down dust.

[Stuka]

I have read that Soviet tankers were in the habit of spreading wet tarpaulins on the ground when firing from fixed positions in order to reduce the dust cloud giving away their postion.

[Gyrene]

Muzzle Brakes also reduce turbulence behind the projectile as it leaves the barrel, helping accuracy some. They are being used by competition shooters on handguns and rifles also. Compensators, which direct gases in a particular direction (On small arms) aren't the same as muzzle brakes as they don't evenly restrict the amount of gas leaving the barrel with the projectile.

[Guest birdgunner]

Just to give you an example of how much force can come out of a muzzle brake, when I was much younger and serving in Germany on M109's we had a safety officer who was not paying attention to what he was doing and was standing between two of the Guns when we fired. The pressure coming from the Muzzle Brakes lifted him off his feet and threw him 15 feet backwards. Everyone had a great laugh about that one as the red faced Safey Officer picked himself up from the mud.

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So many Battles and so little Time... Sleep!!! Who needs Sleep!

[karch]

Does the 109 have a 105mm howizer? Gun/Howizer? Can't remember. Great story. Thanks.

I have a great book on the Hs129 ground attack plane. One of the really interesting things was the installation of 30mm and even a 75mm canon on the thing.

They used very efficient muzzle brakes on the guns to reduce the recoil stresses on the airframe as well as airspeed loss from the recoil. The backblast was so powerful it could damage the aircraft body if not directed correctly.

[Hawk]

All well and good, but how the [beeep] does a muzzle break actually work? How do you trap the gas and not the projectile? Is it because the gas wants to expand in all directions?

Hawk

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Our's is not to reason why, our's is but to do and die!

[Olle Petersson]

Originally posted by Hawk:

Is it because the gas wants to expand in all directions?

Yes, so letting it escape lateral to the barrel axis, and then perhaps even redirect it slightly rearwards, is what makes it reduce recoil...

Cheers

Olle

[von Lucke]

This begs the question, if muzzle brakes are such a good thing, why did the initial run of American 76mm tank guns come without them?

I've read of American tank crews going so far as to chop the muzzle brakes off of destroyed German tanks and then weld them onto the ends of their own gun.

[Guest Martin Cracauer]

Originally posted by Hawk:

All well and good, but how the [beeep] does a muzzle break actually work? How do you trap the gas and not the projectile? Is it because the gas wants to expand in all directions?

I am not a real expert, and I don't know some appropriate english terms, but as I understand:

The two rings in from of the gun's openening form surfaces vertical to the movement of things coming out of the barrel. Obviously, there is a hole in these surfaces to let the shell escape.

The air following the shell will expand to the sides as well as soon as it can (after exiting the barrel), so much of it will not go through the shell opening.

Thus, a major part of the fast-moding air hits the surfaces of the brake. It ricochets. The ricochet creates an impulse to the surface, therefore the brake, therefore the barrel. The impule is directed in the opposite direction that the air was moving, so the barrel is pushed opposite of the shot move.

The effect of the brake is stricly speaking not so much that the recoild is reduced.

The effect is that the explosion recoil that affects the lower part of the barrel is countered by an impulse towards the opposite direction in the high/front end of the gun. The barrel is being compressed, but that is quite irrelevant since the forces that work here cannot change the form of the barrel much. Thus, the counterimpulse from the brake more or less directly works against the recoil.

While we are at it, could someone give me correct english terms for the following:

- The shell as a whole

- the half that is sent (projectile?)

- the propellant half

- the part that holds the propellant, but without the propellant, just the holding tin

- the casing of a HE shell (that is supposed to make fragments/shrapnel)

Pointers to web pages welcome.

[Olle Petersson]

Originally posted by von Lucke:

This begs the question, if muzzle brakes are such a good thing, why did the initial run of American 76mm tank guns come without them?

I don't know for sure but some speculations from me;

- The towed version didn't have any muzzle brake(?), so removing the gun from a towed carriage to place it in a tank turret wouldn't make a MB appear...

- A muzzle brake (of average design) would increase the problem with dust...

Cheers

Olle

[Guest Martin Cracauer]

Originally posted by von Lucke:

This begs the question, if muzzle brakes are such a good thing, why did the initial run of American 76mm tank guns come without them?

Probably weight. The brake is mounted on the outer edge of the gun, that is the last position where you want extra weight.

First, because the tank may get head-heavy (term?).

Then, because for an existing tank the point where the gun is fixed in the turret (term?) is chosen carefully, usually to have the gun balanced. Whatever the criteria were, you would mess them up by later making one end of the gun heavier. Remember the lever effect of having extra weight on the outer edge of the longer side.

Also, the U.S. seemed to worry about turret speed much. You have to be careful to keep your gun length short, otherwise you will run into problems where the gun cannot turn because of trees or houses nearby.

If Sherman 76 crew tended to use brakes nontheless it probably because the gun was outbalanced anyway and/or the recoil was too much. Both would be a result of putting the bigger gun into a turret made for the 75mm. The designer's intention did not apply anymore anyway.

[stevetherat]

Hello,

A muzzle brake allows the gas to escape not at the barrel end (causing recoil) but at the sides (of the brake) causing less recoil.

Picture the scene: The shell is fired and the gasses expand rapidly, pushing the shell up the barrel. In a normal barrel, all of the gasses exit through the end of the barrel immediately behind the shell causing massive recoil.

In a braked barrel, and this is the big difference, when the shell is very close to exiting the barrel the gasses, instead of being held back by the shell, exit through the holes in the muzzel brake which cause less (upto 30%) recoil. The shell has alread accellerated up the barrel and the few centimetres less the gasses expand due to exiting through the brake is no real loss.

Does this clear thngs up? The brake is not designed to reduce barrel length or anything similar, it is for reducing recoil pressures only.

StR

[Forever Babra]

Just to complete stevetherat's comment, when the shell is fired, the gun moves backward on its mounting (recoil effect). When the fast-moving gas expands through the holes in the brake, it strikes the flat surface at the muzzle and applies forward pressure to the rearward-moving barrel, thus retarding recoil.

[flakwagen]

Muzzle brakes reduce recoil by redirecting exiting gasses. The same is true for small arms. My grandpa's automatic 12ga duck gun has a huge muzzle brake on it. They (on artillery) actually kick up more dust than guns without muzzle brakes.

Galland

[KMHPaladin]

Many submachine guns and other smaller type weapons feature muzzle brakes to combat the outrageous muzzle climb that such small weapons exhibit. The brakes on the Thompson and Mini Uzi submachine guns come to mind as examples that work well.

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KMHPaladin

KHarkins@voicenet.com

"We have the enemy surrounded. We are dug in and

have overwhelming numbers. But enemy airpower is

mauling us badly. We will have to withdraw."

-- Japanese infantry commander, SITREP, Burma

[muzzlehead]

I thought it was what everyone used to keep me from drinking myself into oblivion?

Of course Mace uses it to shut me up when I start cuting and pasting DPRK Rhetoric.

Gotta Love Bush he really has them fired up, it must be a commissar's dream in the good old DPRK now a days .