The conventional medium and large caliber gun, in general, utilize the hydro-pneumatic recoil mechanism to control the firing impulse and to return to the battery position. However, this kind of mechanism may cause the problems like the leakages and the property changes in oil and gas due to the temperature variations between low and high temperatures. Accordingly, the friction spring mechanism has recently been researched as an alternative system. The friction spring mechanism consists of a set of closed inner and outer rings with the concentric tapered contact surfaces assembled in the columnar form, and can only be used under the compression load. When the spring column is axially loaded, the tapered surfaces become overlapped, causing the outer rings to expand while the inner rings are being contracted in diameter allowing an axial displacement. Because of friction between tapered contact surfaces, much higher spring stiffness is obtained on the stroke at the increase in load than the stroke at the decrease. In this paper, the dynamic equations regarding the friction spring system and the design approach have been investigated. It is also tried for a dynamic model representing the recoil motion and the friction spring forces. And the model has been proved from firing test using a gun system with friction springs. All the results show that the recoil mechanism using friction springs can substitute for the classic hydro-pneumatic recoil system.
