A novel railgun launcher design

Higher efficiency, and smaller power supplies are needed for most electromagnetic railgun applications. This paper describes the feasibility evaluation of a novel railgun barrel configuration that addresses these issues. The Hypervelocity High Efficiency (HYPE) railgun concept uses a distributed power feed railgun design, but eliminates the need for many separate distributed power supplies. Nested, segmented main rails are individually connected to a single pair of augmenting secondary rails. The augmenting secondary rails are powered from a single energy source. A 15 mm square bore, 300 mm long HYPE railgun was built and tested to evaluate concept feasibility. Analytical and experimental results show that the HYPE configuration is feasible, at least for low velocity.<>