Combined electro-discharge accelerator

Summary form only given. At the IPE RAS was developed and manufactured combined electrodischarge launcher. The main advantage of light-gas launcher (LGG) is possibility to obtain the projectile velocity of 3-7 km/s. Efficiency of this launcher operation depends on molecule weight of working gas and its temperature. It can be achieved by the adiabatic compression of gas or by its heating with the electric arc. The disadvantage of first method is necessity to compress a gas up to very high pressure (more than 3000 MPa) in order to obtain the required temperature. In second case it has to heat a gas up to several thousands Kelvin degrees for the increasing of pressure that can cause the strong thermal erosion of launcher elements. At the IPE RAS was created the 13,3-mm caliber combined launcher, joined together the preliminary adiabatic compression of working gas by means of powder charge and its subsequent heating by the electric arc. This operation mode provides the high efficiency of launcher and allows to decrease the required gas temperature and pressure. The initial experimental conditions were following: initial pressure-10-15 MPa, pressure before the discharge-150-200 MPa, maximum pulse pressure - 500 MPa, discharge current - 300-500 kA. The best ballistic result: velocity of 2.5 km/s for the 9-g projectile and velocity of 4.2 km/s for the 2-g projectile. This launcher was used in experiments to study the hypervelocity impact. At the IPE RAS were carried out following types of such experiments: multi-rod impact, penetration in sand and hypervelocity ricochet. In this paper some results of such experiments are presented.