Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of multi-turn railgun

A comparative study and analysis of the simple and multiple-turn railgun systems from an engineering perspective is presented. The simple railgun system, which has only one pair of rails to let the electric current through, needs very high current source to work effectively, usually from several hundreds of kA to several MA. Construction of a power supply of this magnitude is a technological challenge in itself. A multi-turn railgun on the other hand, which has subdivided rails as the current paths, can greatly reduce the magnitude of the driving current to produce the same electromagnetic force. As a result it lowers the scale and cost of the power supply and broadens the application of the electromagnetic launch technology under certain circumstances. However, multi-turn railgun also gives rise to some technical problems, such as degradation of the system efficiency and complication of the mechanical structure. For an efficient device one needs to optimize the two systems and find a balance in the design parameters incorporating both the systems. Current and future work at the University of Missouri is also described.