Experiments to increase the used energy with the PEGASUS railgun installation

Summary form only given. The largest railgun at the French-German Research Institute is the 6-m long PEGASUS accelerator. It is connected to a 10 MJ pulsed power supply, consisting out of 200 capacitor modules. The capacitors are arranged in banks, which are coupled to different current injection points, distributed along the barrel of this DES (distributed energy supply) system. In past experiments, velocities of 2440 m/s with 320 g projectiles were reached. For this a primary energy of approx. 4 MJ was used¹. In the current investigation it is attempted to increase the used primary energy. For this a new type of projectile was developed and the energy distribution scheme to the accelerator barrel was adopted. The results of the current experiments are discussed and the plans for the near future are presented.