A Battery Powered, 200-KW Rapid Capacitor Charger for a Portable Railgun in Burst Mode Operation At 3 RPS

Abstract

A portable power supply is being developed to rapidly charge the capacitor bank of a low velocity railgun system for countermeasure deployment from aircraft and watercraft. The goal is charge a 15-mF capacitor bank to 2.3 kV in 200 ms to allow countermeasure deployment in bursts of several rounds at a rate of 3 RPS (rounds per second). Due to possible use aboard aircraft, components where chosen to minimize weight and volume. For this reason, as well as for simplicity and to reduce cost, a series bank of special, high-current lead-acid batteries was chosen as the source of prime power. The 192-V voltage of the battery bank is boosted to 2 kV using a bridge converter comprised of four IGBT switches in an H-bridge configuration, a ferrite-core step-up transformer, and a full wave rectifier.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA610101

Entities

People

  • Jesse Neri
  • Raymond Allen

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Capacitance
  • Capacitors
  • Converters
  • Dc-To-Dc Converters
  • Energy
  • Ferrites
  • Full-Wave Rectifiers
  • Impedance
  • Lead Acid Batteries
  • Materials
  • Military Aircraft
  • Pulsed Power
  • Rectifiers
  • Short Circuits
  • Transformers
  • Watercraft

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • ballistics.