Pulsed Power, Plasma, and Interior Ballistic Simulations for Application to Electrothermal-Chemical Guns.
Abstract
Recently the development of a PC-based, end to end electrothermal chemical (ETC) gun ballistic simulation code called the pulsed power plasma interior ballistics (PPIB) was completed. PPIB is a time dependent, lumped parameter, electrothermal chemical gun ballistic simulator which has a one dimensional plasma submodel. The PPIB code is used to simulate the three main subsystems of the overall ETC gun system, including the pulse power subsystem, the plasma cartridge, and the interior ballistic process. PPIB is a linkage of three well-established systems models: (1) P2SIM for pulse power, developed by PCRL to model electric gun pulse power supplies, (2) the plasma cartridge code of Powell and Zielinski from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), and (3) the latest version of the interior ballistics code IBHVG2 from ARL. PPIB is written in American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard formula translator (FORTRAN) and is designed to run on any 386, 486 or Pentium-based PC platform. The code has been validated against a 4-MJ pulsed power system, 30-mm ETC plasma experiments, and plasma capillary calculations from the stand alone Powell code, all of which are presented here. In addition, results obtained for high energy plasma simulations are provided. Included in this study are (1) the electrical behavior and transfer efficiencies of various plasma capillary tubes; (2) the amount of energy partitioned to each of the constituents within the plasma such as internal, kinetic, and work energy; and (3) the radiant energy partitioning of the plasma inside the capillary tube during the electrical discharge. The study is concluded with an estimate of the overall energy delivered for the entire process of power supply discharge to electrical plasma generation and radiation for a given test case.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA306403
Entities
People
- Gary L. Katulka
- Gloria P. Wren
- Jeffrey Okamitsu
- Neale A. Messina
- William F. Oberle
Organizations
- United States Army Research Laboratory