Design and power conditioning for the coil-gun

The author describes the power conditioning scheme for a contactless coilgun called the linear induction launcher (LIL). The barrel of the LIL consists of a linear array of coils carrying polyphase currents. These create an electromagnetic wave pocket which moves with increasing velocity from breech to muzzle, smoothly accelerating a conductive sleeve which carries a set of azimuthal currents sinusoidally distributed along its length and which encloses the projectile payload. The power conditioner provides high energy utilization by transferring energy from capacitor to capacitor simultaneously with the projectile movement. The modular construction of the barrel is described together with laboratory results obtained with a breadboard model of the power conditioner circuit