Rheinmetall Gmbh

Rainer Diel

Achim Sippel

Jurgen Meyer

Wilfried Becker

Heinz-Josef Kruse

Klaus-Dieter Pahnke

Hans-Werner Luther

Heinz J Kruse

Gisbert Bartsch

Monika Wildau

Jurgen Huege

A projectile arrangement including a subcaliber projectile body and a segmented, discardable propelling cage sabot provided with a common form locking zone for the transmission of the acceleration forces. To reduce the notch effect on the projectile body, and thus the danger of breakage, due to the conventional thread grooves in the form locking zone, particularly in long, slender penetrators made of a breakage susceptible tungsten heavy metal, a novel form locking connection for the inner form locking region between the propelling cage and the projectile body is provided. This novel form locking connection is characterized in that in the region of the form locking zone beneath the exterior gas pressure receiving surface of the sabot, only the exterior surface of the projectile body is provided with preferably annular microgrooves and the surrounding inner surface of the sabot is smooth. The microgrooves are produced preferably by non-cutting shaping such as, for example, rolling or pressing in, and are configured as arcuate recesses having a relatively flat groove bottom and pointed lands between adjacent recesses. When the projectile arrangement is fired, the microgrooves of the relatively hard projectile body press themselves into the previously smooth interior surface of the relatively soft sabot, and thus produce a corresponding form locking connection only at the moment of firing.

Projectile arrangement

A segmented, discardable sabot for a slender sub-caliber kinetic energy projectile. At least two sabot segments are provided having adjacent plane parallel segment separating faces and presenting at least one caliber-sized gas sealing pressure flange member and a non-caliber sized partial region along the longitudinal extent of the sabot. The overall cross section of the sabot, at least in the partial region, has an essentially polygonal cross-sectional shape, and a tangent placed at any point of the periphery of the sabot does not pass through the cross-sectional area of the sabot, thereby providing increased bending stiffness in the non-caliber-sized region of the sabot.

Segmented, discardable sabot having polygonal cross-section for

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Dusseldorf, Germany

Rainer Diel