A GUN BORE CLEANING THROUGH DRY ICE BLASTING

Abstract

Dry Ice is Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in solid form. Cold ice particles (approx -780 C) can be blasted on the surfaces to be cleaned with compressed air. This leads to thermal tension in the deposits, causing cracks and embitterment, in turn breaking off the contaminants. This technique is very gentle and environment friendly. No harmful blasting agents/ residues such as waste water or granules are left behind, as solid CO2 goes backs into the air in gaseous state after strike. The same technique has been applied first time to clean the bore of the gun barrel. With many others, the main contaminant left in the bore is copper. For which a lot of effort and resources are required to clean. The copper is easily removed by dry ice blasting.

In current research paper, a complete study on the application of dry ice, its comparison with other blasting techniques and its environmental effects are carried out. A practical / demonstration of gun bore cleaning with dry ice blasting were carried out in HIT with the cooperation of a private firm PAIE. After the demonstration, on the bases of results obtained, certain recommendations were given. The CFD analyses of the given recommendations were carried out. Moreover the effect of dry ice blasting on parent material were also studied in detail and then proved practically and numerically.