This Recommended Practice (RP) is intended to provide guidelines for component and structure testing for significant response to exposure to gunfire. It is organized to supplement guidelines provided in MIL-STD-81 OF and to provide for realistic testing practices for gunfire environments. A substantial portion of this RP assumes that the gunfire response environment has been measured and that representative time history traces are available.

The first three procedures representing recommended practices, under "The Pulse Method," have no prediction parameters and in general are not considered parameterizable procedures. These procedures are based upon the laboratory replication of measured equipment response to gunfire.

The fourth procedure, under "The Random Vibration Method," assumes the prediction method of MIL-STD-810E is applicable in cases in which 1) measured data are not available, and 2) the response to gunfire would not represent a significant environment (i.e., the equipment is far from the pressure pulse emanating from the gun and isolated from the structure-borne vibration caused by the gun). This procedure attempts to specify the environment for the many complex situations whereby multiple guns are firing at several rates, and the contributions for precise analysis are difficult to categorize. In this case, equipment response may be considered, for practical purposes, to be high-level random vibration. Through use of certain signal processing techniques, such as synchronous sampling, information on response from individual guns may be detected, provided the gunfiring rate is known and deterministic. Data in this area are currently unavailable, and this processing goes beyond that discussed in this RP. Finally, this RP, along with the procedures, may apply to other pulse form response environments, such as propeller-oriented environments, that are not addressed here.