ABSTRACT
This graduation thesis, developed in collaboration with Oto Melara S.p.a, concerns the study and the design of a mechanical fuze setting system for a 127 mm particular type of ammunition. This study takes place during the development of a new naval system that will have to manage, both standard ammunition (provided with mechanical fuzes) and an innovative type (contact setting). The purpose of the fuze setting system is to set mechanically the standard ammunition fuze in order to regulate the blasting time.
This work analyses, in particular, the installation of the fuze setting system in the training mass where one of the two loading arms held the ammunition which is carried by a rack hoist; after the ammunition setting, the loading arm rams the round into the barrel.
The fuze setting system installation in that point of the loading chain has two main limitations, even though the time elapsed between the fuze setting and the ramming is acceptable: the first concerns the fact that the fuze setting operation is entirely in series with the loading, affecting the fire rate, and so execution times have to be reduced to a minimum; the second concern, instead, the available scarce space for vertical development of the entire system and so the necessity to take care of the component dimensions.
The first part of the work has been focused on the definition of the system requirements, on the evaluation of the possible solutions to adopt, and on the choice of the best solution based on objectives parameters. The second part, instead, has concerned the detailed design of the selected choice and then the performing of dimensional and kineto-dinamics verifications utilizing proper design and calculus softwares (Pro-Engineer, Pro-Mechanica, Ansys, Matlab) .
