The plasma-gun augmented electrothermal accelerator

A two-stage accelerator facility which is presently able to accelerate particles in the mass range of 10^-5 to 10^-3 g to velocities up to 5 km/s has been developed. The facility is a combination of the electrothermal accelerator and the plasmadynamic accelerator. This is the first time that these two power capacitor driven accelerators were operated in a combined mode. The recently developed electrothermal accelerator is described, along with its energy storage system and its operational parameters. The electrothermal accelerator alone is able to accelerate 28 mg projectiles to velocities up to 3.6 km/s. The experimental set-up of the two-stage facility, the triggering system, and the different electric and photographic diagnostic techniques are described. The problems and performance losses of the plasmadynamic accelerator due to the blow-by of the aluminum plasma in the electrothermal accelerator are documented. A refined theory of the plasmadynamic accelerator is given. Also described is the specially developed sabot technique to minimize the blow-by in the electrothermal accelerator. With this technique, it was possible to perform a successful two-stage operation of the combined facility. First experimental results are presented