Inhibition of thermochemical erosion by different coatings attached to the barrel chamber at high temperature and supersonic environments

Exploring the thermochemical erosion mechanism and inhibiting the thermochemical erosion reaction is essential to improve the service life of the barrel weapon. Due to high temperature and supersonic environments of the barrel weapon, the current research on its thermochemical erosion has only stopped at the final failure moment. This paper designs an erosion analog device to simulate harsh launch environments and to investigate the erosion mechanism through a combination of removable samples. The removable samples consist of five types: artillery steel sample, Cr-plated coating sample, Cr-plated coating with laser shock peening sample, tantalum magnetron sputtering coating sample, and nano-enhanced coating sample. With 200 times erosion experiments, samples have appeared with different degrees of erosion acceleration, in which the Cr-plated coating with laser shock peening sample has the least cracks and the best corrosion inhibition performance. In addition, Cr-plated coating with laser shock peening samples with diameters of 80, 100, and 120 μm are designed, and the erosion experiments reveal that the 80 μm sample shows the best erosion inhibition performance.