Transition conditions for solid armatures in railguns with muzzle current feed
- Troitsk Inst. for Innovation and Fusion Research (Russian Federation)
Velocity skin effect is a principle reason that solid armatures in railguns transition from smooth metal-on-metal contact with the rails to arcing contact. Transition occurs when armature velocity reaches some critical value which depends weakly on current and strongly on the latent heat of evaporation and electrical conductivity of the armature material. Conductivity of the rail material is also a factor. The analysis shows that when current is fed to the armature from the muzzle of a railgun armature to rail current distribution is more uniform over the contact face than is the case with normal breech feed. The authors show that muzzle feed allows transition velocity to be increased three-fold.
- OSTI ID:
- 32048
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-940481--
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Magnetics Journal Issue: 1Pt1 Vol. 31; ISSN IEMGAQ; ISSN 0018-9464
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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