Modern Cannons - Solution
Or Super Can Openers
for Super Cans
To solve this seemingly intractable problem the
designers of modern shot rounds (solid metal) use a sabot
round with a depleted uranium core. The sabot (means boot in
French) has a large base for the interior ballistics, but the minute it
leaves the muzzle the boot is pulled away by the airstream (to drop on
the heads of the friendly infantry?) and a long baby spear continues
down range, optimized for almost a thousand meters per sec. air drag,
and then strikes the enemy tank. It can be effective without
penetration because the steel being hit will become a liquid
(for a few
micro seconds) and the shock wave will cause steel on the inside of the
tank to come loose and fly around with most of the kinetic energy of
the impact (conservation of
momentum, elastic collision as far as the
loose steel on the inside is concerned). These lumps of
molten
steel, called spall,
actually
cause the casualties and damage that make
the tank inoperable. The damage on old tanks in museums is easy
to see as the molten steel is spread out like a high speed photograph
of a drop of water. Interestingly an Anti-Tank projectile struck
a church near Normandy and the stone also splatered as if it was a
metal.
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sabot_separating.gif