Current Management for Improved Railgun Performance
Abstract
Continued railgun development toward high energy devices that launch useful projectiles and have a lifetime of hundreds to thousands of shots, requires progress in two related aspects of accelerator design: 1) rail containment structures must be made capable of withstanding greater rail repulsion forces, without causing accelerators to become too bulky for their intended use; and 2) rails must sustain very minor heat-related damage during projectile launch. The potential for managing rail current and its distribution to alleviate the two aforementioned problems is investigated. Techniques for calculating pulsed, rail current distribution, in the infinite conductivity approximation, and resultant projectile force are developed. Then, passive, current management methods -- involving multiple rail pairs to distribute currents and rail-repulsive forces in a few, evenly-spaced, radial directions, for easier rail containment -- are explored. Optimized multi-rail, railgun cross sectional shapes that produce more projectile force than conventional two-rail railguns operating under the same local peak current density constraints are determined. These railguns have nontraditional bore shapes, i.e., not square or round. The use of neighboring, current-carrying conductors to actively influence rail current distribution is then studied. Keywords: Theses.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1989
- Accession Number
- ADA212887
Entities
People
- Joseph H. Beno Jr