Technical aspects of railguns

We present the ISL 50 mm 3 MJ railgun as an illustrative example in order to discuss some specific technical aspects in the case of a nonstiff bore railgun. The lack of ultra-stiffness admits low-weight barrel constructions but requires a special consideration of the interaction between the rails on one hand and the projectile and current input connections on the other. This interrelationship has to be taken as a combined problem; therefore we deal with the repulsive rail forces, recoil forces, contact loads and the structural response of the supporting housing and discuss some of the resulting problems.<>