Power system modelling for a tactical railgun demonstrator

Author

Putley, D. ; Spikings, C.R.

Author_Institution

AEA Technol. Culham Lab., Abingdon, UK

Volume

27

Issue

1

fYear

1991

fDate

1/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

409

Lastpage

414

Abstract

Results of a prefeasibility study of electromagnetic launchers for a tactical applications demonstrator are described. The object of this work was to study the power system requirements for a 12 MJ (kinetic energy) railgun system which would be used to demonstrate the accuracy and lethality of hypervelocity projectiles (up to 3.5 km/s) fired from a railgun. Theoretical work is presented as a basis for scoping calculations to determine the required pulse energies for a railgun power system, as a function of the required projectile peak-to-mean-acceleration ratio; this shows that the introduction of a requirement for a low peak-to-mean ratio increases the barrel energy demand for a given total muzzle energy. Results are also presented from the numerical analysis of both capacitor and homopolar generator systems

Keywords

digital simulation; electromagnetic launchers; power engineering computing; power supplies to apparatus; 12 MJ; barrel energy; capacitor; electromagnetic launchers; homopolar generator systems; hypervelocity projectiles; muzzle energy; peak-to-mean-acceleration ratio; power supplies to apparatus; power system; scoping calculations; tactical railgun demonstrator; Acceleration; Capacitors; Electromagnetic launching; Equations; Kinetic energy; Laboratories; Power system modeling; Projectiles; Pulse power systems; Railguns;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.101067

Filename

101067