Operation
In a typical concept, a blank cartridge is fired into a gun barrel that has a diverging nozzle screwed onto the muzzle. In the nozzle, the short pulse of high pressure gas briefly accelerates to a supersonic exit velocity, whereupon a portion of the exhaust transforms from axial flow into a subsonic, high spin vortex ring with the potential energy to fly hundreds of feet.
The nozzle of a vortex ring gun is designed to both contain the short pulse of accelerating gas until the maximum pressure is lowered to atmospheric and to straighten the exhaust into an axial flow. The objective is to form the vortex ring with the highest possible velocity and spin by colliding a short pulse of a supersonic jet stream against the relatively stagnant air behind the spherically expanding Blast Shock. Without the nozzle, the high pressure jet stream is reduced to atmospheric by standing shock waves at the muzzle, and the resulting vortex ring is not only formed by a lower velocity jet stream but also degraded by turbulence.
Read more about this topic: Vortex Ring Gun
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