
7
2
Physical Foundation of Interior Ballistics
2.1 Ideal Gas Law
The fundamental means of exchanging the stored chemical energy of a propellant into
the kinetic energy of the projectile is through the generation of gas and the accompanying
pressure rise. We shall proceed in a disciplined approach, whereby we introduce concepts
at their simplest level and then add the complications associated with the real world.
Every material exists in some physical state of either solid, liquid, or gas. There are sev-
eral variables that we can directly measure and some that we cannot but that are related
to one another through some functional relationship. T