Structure Design of an "Open-Bore" Electromagnetic Launcher

Author

Nie, Jianxin ; Jiao, Qingjie ; Qin, Jianfeng ; Li, Jun ; Han, Jingjing

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. of Explosion Sci. & Technol., Beijing Inst. of Technol., Beijing

fYear

2008

fDate

10-13 June 2008

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

An "open-bore" railgun, a small bore of 14 mm with vented top and bottom, was designed especially for the Beijing Institute of Technology Armature Tester (BITAT) Electromagnetic Launcher (EML) Program. This novel design may be a possible solution to avoiding forming "secondary arc", and will be mainly employed as a plasma armature tester in the near future. In this paper, a series of numerical simulations on the structural strength and deformation of our railgun are investigated by using the finite element method. A simple plate-mechanics model is also proposed to evaluate the maximum permissible EM force on the insulated support plates. Finally, the optimum design of our railgun is suggested based on the results of the numerical simulations.

Keywords

deformation; finite element analysis; mechanical strength; railguns; Beijing Institute of Technology Armature Tester; Electromagnetic Launcher Program; finite element method; maximum permissible EM force; open-bore electromagnetic launcher; open-bore railgun; plasma armature tester; simple plate-mechanics model; size 14 mm; structure design; Boring; Electromagnetic launching; Insulation; Numerical simulation; Plasma materials processing; Plasma simulation; Power supplies; Railguns; Rails; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electromagnetic Launch Technology, 2008 14th Symposium on

Conference_Location

Victoria, BC

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1832-9

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-1833-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ELT.2008.79

Filename

4657639