Automated shot counter system for through-life support of target rifles

Competitive target shooting requires rifles with high levels of performance and small margins of error. Optimal performance of rifles in terms shot velocity can be expected over a period of use until an indeterminate but critical number of rounds has been fired when it will start to deteriorate. The rifle barrel must then be renewed. Accurate and reliable record-keeping of number of shots fired is therefore critical to minimise the through-life cost of owning a target rifle and also maintaining maximum performance. This can be most effectively done using an automated means for monitoring the number of rounds fired. In this paper the acoustic emission technique is used to monitor and identify shot rounds fired based solely on the features of Acoustic Emission (AE) signals for the first time. The results obtained from experiments showed unambiguous identification of shots fired and the capability to monitor degradation of the barrel as a function of number of shots fired.