Comparing a DES to a breech FED railgun usingaspice simulation

Summary form only given. The French-German Research Institute performs experimental railgun research. The main railgun is the 6 m long PEGASUS installation, being supplied with electric power by a 10 MJ capacitor bank. The current barrel of this railgun is of the distributed energy supply (DES) type, where the current injection points are distributed along the first 4 m of the barrel length. By minimizing the current path length from the current injection point to the armature, such a system increases the acceleration efficiency when compared to a breech fed system with similar parameters. On the other hand, the multiple current injections make a DES barrel more complex and heavier. Using NGSPICE¹ an electric circuit describing the pulsed power supply and the electromagnetic launcher of the PEGASUS set up was implemented. With this program, the performance of the DES configuration was compared to a breech fed barrel. The results of this study are used as an input for the design of a new barrel.