Most anti-tank weapons from WW2 up to today primarily aim to destroy a tank by penetrating the armor and damaging components and/or killing the crew, through techniques such as shaped-charge HEAT shells. It occurred to me recently that a tank could be effectively disabled by damaging the cannon barrel: even if only slightly bent it would at best be very inaccurate, and at worst cause in-barrel detonation of a fired shell. Was there ever any research into such a weapon? I'm picturing some type of net with an explosive charge that would wrap around the exposed barrel, but I'm sure there's many techniques that could be applied. It would seem to me a much easier solution to disable an enemy tank, especially given the difficulty US/UK medium tanks had penetrating heavy german armor earlier in the war.
This question is mostly directed at WW2 due to the rapid evolution and experimentation of tank and anti-tank technology at that time, but I'd also be interested if there was any such research up to 1996.
I've never come across anything regarding the development or idea for such a weapon and I would imagine that such an idea would not have received the support necessary to lead to a development stage. A tank with a damaged barrel is still a threat, WW2 tanks were also armed with machine guns and while useless against other armoured targets, these machine guns still posed a serious threat to infantry. The purpose of anti tank weapons was the puncturing of armour and the crippling of the crew. Crippling the crew removes the tank as a threat more effectively then disabling the main gun.