Design and Static Load Analysis Comparing Steel, Grey Cast Iron and Titanium Alloy as Materials for Breech Hinged Lugs in Recoil Weapons

Abstract

This design innovation work is related to design validation of short recoil weapons mechanism's critical components in context of upper receivers. It explains a new mechanism for locking and unlocking of bolt with the breech and subsequent advantageous design changes in the bolt's construction. This design intends to build a new platform for a short recoil weapon chambered in 5.56×45 NATO ammunition which promises competency with its existing counter parts of the same domain, but exhibiting exceptionally improved reliability due to elimination of interdependence of reciprocating cycles of barrel and bolt assemblies. This work involves the design of the whole functioning system using Solidworks 2015 version and a static structural analysis to compare and choose the most suitable material among commonly used ones: steel AISI 4340, grey cast iron and titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V, for locking lugs, being critical pair of components, using ANSYS 14.5. Results showed that titanium alloy was the most suitable material for the strength purpose. It is to be noted that this system may not only be utilized for assault rifles, but also for sub-machine guns, machine gun variants and even in handguns.