Measurement of rail current distribution in rail launchers

This paper deals with the measurement of current distribution across the rails of rail launchers. The proposed approach is based on inductive method by magnetically coupling an array of search loops with the rail-armature circuit. The procedure was already successfully employed for current distribution measurements among the brushes of multi-brush armatures and its extension to the current distribution reconstruction across the rails is here discussed. The method sensitivity and the measurement model uncertainty in a simple case study are firstly analyzed based on an analytical model formulation, to obtain information about the applicability of this approach. Then, a finite element analysis and experimental results are presented, discussing various rails-armature configurations.