The Effects of Surface Coatings on the Onset of Rail Gouging

In solid-armature railguns, hypervelocity gouging damage can significantly limit the useful life of rails. Most solutions to this problem have involved the use of hard rail materials, which tend to be poor electrical conductors. However, it has also been observed that precoating the conductors of a railgun can significantly delay the onset of gouging. This is usually accomplished by launching several aluminum-alloy armatures on a set of rails below the gouging threshold. When an aluminum-alloy armature is launched at high speeds on copper-alloy rails, a thin (tens of microns) layer of aluminum is deposited on the surface of the rail. Subsequent tests at higher speeds often result in the delay or absence of gouging at speeds where it is normally expected to occur. However, this effect is not particularly robust, since gouging can still occur with sufficient lateral loads. In the experiments reported here, tests were conducted on UNS C15725 (Glidcop Al-25) copper rails to examine the effect of a controlled precoating applied with an electroplating process. Aluminum thicknesses of 2, 5, 25, and 50 μm were tested, providing a well-characterized aluminum layer as opposed to the rough variable-thickness layer typically deposited with an aluminum armature. Results of the experiments and analysis are reported in this paper.