Driving circuit research of a coil launcher

A coaxial induction coil launcher is a hot topic in the electromagnetic launch (EML) field. Power supply is crucial equipment which determines whether induction coil launcher could be used or not. Configuration of the driving circuit influences the efficiency of the coil launcher directly. But which driving circuit is the best puzzled a lot of people. This paper gives a detailed analysis of the properties of the driving circuit construction based on the capacitor source. Three topologies of the driving circuit are compared including oscillation circuit, crowbar circuit and half-wave circuit. It is proved that which circuit has the better efficiency depends on the detailed parameters of the experiment, especially the crowbar resistance. Crowbar resistor regulates not only efficiency of the system, but also temperature rise of the coil. Electromagnetic force (EMF) applied on the armature will be another question which influence service condition of the driving circuits. Oscillation circuit and crowbar circuit should apply to the asynchronous induction coil launcher and synchronous induction coil launcher, respectively. Half-wave circuit is seldom used in the experiment. Although efficiency of the half-wave circuit is very high, speed of the armature is very low. A simple independent half-wave circuit is suggested in this paper. Generally speaking, the comprehensive properties of crowbar circuit is the most excellent in the three typical circuit. Conclusions of the paper could provide guidelines for practice. A detailed analysis will be presented in this paper.