End-to-end modeling of electrothermal launchers

The authors describe the development and illustrate the utility of end-to-end models of electrothermal launcher systems. The end-to-end model is composed of a component that models the power supply, a component that models the plasma injector, and a component that models the interior ballistics processes. Appropriate coupling conditions are applied at the interfaces between the component models in order to make the end-to-end model self-consistent. The component models are made modular so that models with varying degrees of complexity can be interchanged as needed for resolution. The authors illustrate the use of the end-to-end model to analyze experimental results using two different levels of interior ballistics models. First, they use a control volume model of the interior ballistics process to simulate a test firing. Then, they illustrate the resolution that can be achieved with a two-dimensional model of the interior ballistics