Operation of a 2.4-MJ Pulsed Power System for Railgun

A 2.4-MJ capacitive pulsed power system (PPS) for a railgun was fabricated, installed, and tested. It consists of four independent 600-kJ segments. Each segment contains six 100-kJ capacitor bank modules, a capacitor charger, a circuit for charge and dump, a relay box, and a segment controller. The 100-kJ unit module is composed of a metalized film capacitor, semiconductor switches, and an inductor. It was designed for a safe operation within 10 kV and 75 kA. All the modules in a segment are charged with the same voltage, but the trigger times of each module are individually controllable. With the 2.4-MJ PPS and a medium caliber railgun, discharge experiments in the breech-shorted condition and launch experiments using aluminum armatures were conducted. With the results, we modified the electrical circuit parameters of the PPS from the initial designed values. The circuit simulation using the modified parameters showed good agreement with the experiment data.