Is a Centrifuge Rifle Feasible?

Question

We have discussed the Railgun and the Coilgun, I'm fairly sure we've even talked once or twice about magnet guns. But could a centrifuge gun exist?

For those who do not know, a centrifuge rifle is exactly what it sounds like, at the pull of the first trigger the hollow, donut shaped barrel spins the bullets until they reach terminal velocity and then when the second trigger is pulled, the bullet fires out of the barrel. I see three obvious problems with this theoretical gun;

1. Ammunition, a centrifuge gun would be limited to spherical ammunition, and is likely to jam.
2. Munitions, a centrifuge gun would require a large battery and would need to be charged often.
3. Accuracy, a centrifuge gun would be at best inaccurate and at worst lethal to the wielder.

What can I do to make the centrifuge gun design feasible? would changes need to made?

Answer 1

No, it is not feasible

A few years ago, this hoax/scam video was making the rounds. I did the math on the claims.

In short: this thing — in order to live up to the claims in the video — has the power requirements of a nuclear powered warship

And then I did not even begin to look at things like gyro forces, vibrations, losses, sound, etc... I was only looking at the projectiles.

Problems with it:

• Recoil. There will be recoil. Sir Isaac Newton cannot be fooled. To be precise what you will have is an unbalanced flywheel that will vibrate violently.
• Enormous gyro forces. The velocities the flywheel must move at means you have a huge disk spinning at Ludicrous Speed. You cannot turn that, meaning you can only aim in one plane.
• Enormous centrifugal forces. What do you think happens when the enemy scores a hit on that flywheel and it shatters? That is right: a claymore mine exploding right in your face.
• Power requirements. Already mentioned.
• Long start-up. It takes time to spin up the flywheel to any usable speeds.
• Poor ballistics. Such a weapon requires spherical ammunition to work. Spheres have the worst ballistics of all kinds of ammunition, resulting in poor accuracy and short range.

So to answer your question, what do you need to make this feasible? Answer: You need to break the laws of physics. The centrifuge gun is a bad idea, not matter how you slice, dice or chop it.

Answer 2

You'll also have to factor in the gyroscopic forces of a rotating barrel. If you've ever played with spinning a bicycle wheel, you'll know that it resists leaving it's current axis of spin. This would make aiming the thing somewhat tricky.

However, a fixed turret with a stack of ten or so rotating barrels, now that's a whole different thing and would be decidedly deadly.

Answer 3

wouldn't this basically be a slingshot? Look at how slingshots work. Also disc throwing. Those are 2 examples from the real world that turn centrifugal force into forward momentum.

Ammunition - would probably need to be either spherical or disc shaped. But since your launch mechanism isn't chemical and you don't have a bullet, that shouldn't be a problem.

Munitions - For a non stationary gun, especially handheld, it's probably a lot more practical to go for something based on a different technology. The gun would probably require a lot of energy. But, compared to rail gun or coil gun, the power requirements would probably be comparable. If you want a stationary weapon(think tank, boat or something similar) you no longer have that much problems with power requirements, or accuracy(since a computer can accurately target it.

Accuracy. As already said, it would be difficult to target without tech, but computer release mechanism should be quite simple to use.

The only advantage i ca see for such a gun would be it's ability to hurl unstable material, since it gives its ammo a much slower starting speed than say a bullet.