Experimental Study on the Diverse Output Performance of a Firearm Firing-Ignition System

The firearm firing-ignition system performs firing and ignites a bullet propellant to produce diverse outputs. The objectives of this study were to extract various performance parameters characterizing the firearm firing-ignition system and to study the system output performance. The firing pins, primers, and cartridge cases were used as test objects, and a method for testing the diverse output performance of the firearm firing-ignition system is proposed based on the real assembly relationship of firearms. The pressure output patterns and flame characteristics were analyzed under different operating conditions and ambient temperatures. With increasing firing energy, the pressure start time and peak arrival time of the firearm firing-ignition system output decreased, whereas the length of the flame output generally increased. The flame duration was positively correlated with the firing energy. The development of the shape and temperature of the flame output could be categorized into four stages, where the maximum flame length of 60-70 mm occurred during the third stage and the highest temperature of 1218 ℃ was reached during the second stage. This study resolves the problem that the firearm firing–ignition system has a variety of outputs but only a single characterization parameter (the primer sensitivity) and engineering practice fails to quantitatively evaluate the system output performance.