The invention relates to a gun barrel having a muzzle brake, especially for large-caliber guns.
European Patent EP 0 085 754 B1 discloses a gun barrel in which a separate muzzle brake is attached to the muzzle end of the barrel in order to reduce the recoil energy. The muzzle brake includes a tubular piece that ends flush with the barrel and has radial bores around its circumference, with the inside diameter of the tube being identical to the caliber. The brake further includes a jacket tube, which has diametrically opposite gas-exit openings that extend perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the bore.
A drawback associated with this known arrangement is that the use of such muzzle brakes dictates a complicated machining of the respective gun muzzle, because relatively high stresses (high acceleration forces, high tensile forces due to the braking effect) act on the muzzle brake when the gun is fired, so the threaded connection that fixes the muzzle brake to the gun barrel must be designed with these stresses in mind. It is also necessary to machine the muzzle brake to attain a smooth transition for the projectile between the caliber diameter of the barrel and that of the muzzle brake. This is especially the case for rifled barrels, in which a smooth transition must be additionally assured between the rifling-field profiles of the barrel and the muzzle brake.