Installation and testing of a high L´ laminated railgun

Author

Herbst, J.D.

Author_Institution

Center for Electromech., Texas Univ., Austin, TX, USA

Volume

1

fYear

1995

fDate

3-6 July 1995

Firstpage

273

Abstract

This paper describes the installation of a 9 MJ military railgun into the Electric Armaments Research Center facility (USA) and discusses the performance of the railgun and flexible hexapolar cable bus system during testing. The hexapolar cables have been tested to 34 kV and are rated for a nominal current of 200 kA per cable, and the flexible bus system and breech connection have repeatedly performed successfully at gigawatt power levels. The paper also presents the results of the railgun test program firing two variations of the sabot launched electric gun kinetic energy (SLEKE) projectiles along with an evaluation of the performance of the dispersion strengthened copper rails with transitioning solid armatures.

Keywords

installation; laminations; military equipment; power cable testing; power supplies to apparatus; pulse generators; pulsed power technology; railguns; 200 kA; 34 kV; 9 MJ; breech connection; flexible hexapolar power cable; high L´ laminated railgun; installation; military railgun; performance; pulsed power cables; railgun power supplies; sabot launched electric gun kinetic energy projectiles; testing; Boring; Copper; Electromagnetic launching; Glass; Partial response channels; Projectiles; Railguns; Rails; Steel; System testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Pulsed Power Conference, 1995. Digest of Technical Papers., Tenth IEEE International

Conference_Location

Albuquerque, NM, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-2791-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PPC.1995.596492

Filename

596492