Firing drives the barrel backward on rails; a hydraulic buffer
forces oil through a narrow orifice to dissipate most of the recoil
energy as heat, while a spring (the recuperator) stores the rest
and slowly pushes the barrel back to battery.
F_hydraulic = -c(orifice)·v·|v|
F_spring = -k·x
m·a = F_hydraulic + F_spring
- Hydraulic orifice size — smaller orifices resist oil flow more, absorbing energy faster but spiking peak force on the carriage.
- Recuperator spring stiffness — how strongly the barrel is pushed back into firing position afterward.
- Barrel + breech mass — a heavier reciprocating mass recoils slower for the same impulse and needs more damping to arrest in the same travel.
- Charge — the recoil energy delivered by firing; a bigger charge needs proportionally more damping.
Without a recoil brake the entire firing impulse would be
transmitted straight into the carriage/mount — real guns from
WWI-era artillery to modern howitzers rely on exactly this
hydraulic-orifice damping to keep the mount from being torn apart.
The graph pane on the right plots position and velocity against
time for the current shot so you can read off the exact moment
the barrel arrests and starts its slow spring-driven return.