Payload acceleration using a 10 MJ DES railgun

Railguns have the experimentally proven capability to accelerate masses of several kilograms to velocities in excess of 2 km/s. The US ONR railgun project demonstrates that the military application of such high performance railguns is becoming a realistic possibility in the nearer future. One of the current research projects of the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis is being aimed at developing a realistic payload for the railgun projectile and at the same time to increase the used primary energy. Up to now the research concentrated on reaching velocities of about 2.5 km/s with 300 g projectiles. Within this new multi-year research program the first step is to develop 600 g projectiles (with approx. 50% payload) and accelerate these to at least 2000 m/s. Here the results of experiments with two different types of projectiles at energy levels of 3.8MJ are reported.