Data acquisition applications for long duration electromagnetic launcher experiments

The authors describe the evolution of a data acquisition approach in use for basic research in the electromagnetic launcher (EML) area, discuss data acquisition capabilities requirements, and present examples of the data obtained using this approach. Some event data typical of the experiments conducted with the battery powered capacitor EML. The data acquisition approach described provides the required performance for long-duration EML research experiments. Integrated data acquisition systems (DASs) which use digitizer technology successfully address waveform resolution and data processing demands with considerable reserve capacity for the future. Full capacity of the DAS configuration with respect to throughput and data storage has not been required to date in a single experiment. However, as the duration and scale of these EML experiments increase in the near term it is anticipated that all of the capabilities offered in the DAS, to include segmenting with multiple sampling rates, will be used