A Study of Electrothermal Launcher Efficiencies and Gas Dynamics

Author

Motes, Doyle ; Ellzey, Janet ; Levinson, Scott ; Parker, Jerry ; Stefani, Francis ; Wetz, David

Author_Institution

Inst. for Adv. Technol., Univ. of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

fYear

2008

fDate

10-13 June 2008

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

This paper describes a series of experiments to study the efficiency of an electrothermal (ET) launcher. The launcher serves as a pre-accelerator for a plasma-driven hypervelocity railgun experiment at the Institute for Advanced Technology. The ET launcher is designed to accelerate small polycarbonate projectiles to about 1 km/s. The objective of this study was to understand how pulse duration affects the efficiency with which the pressure of the ET discharge is coupled to the projectile. The study consisted of multiple tests for which the total energy of the discharge was kept constant, but the pulse length was varied. The dependent variable in the tests was the muzzle velocity of the projectile. The experimental results are presented and compared with gas-dynamic considerations.

Keywords

aerodynamics; electrothermal launchers; railguns; Institute for Advanced Technology; electrothermal launcher; gas dynamics; muzzle; plasma-driven hypervelocity railgun; preaccelerator; pulse duration; Acceleration; Boring; Electrothermal launching; Plasma accelerators; Plasma temperature; Projectiles; Pulse shaping methods; Railguns; Testing; Wire;

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.2008.114

Filename

4657674