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Study of a new railgun configuration with perforated sidewalls

Conference · · IEEE Transactions on Magnetics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)
OSTI ID:5871688
; ;  [1]
  1. Fusion Technology and Charged Particle Research Lab., Urbana, IL (United States)
A new railgun configuration with perforated sidewalls is investigated. The motivation for this new configuration is the desire to minimize the detrimental effects of inertial and viscous drag at high velocities caused by the debris from the projectile and the gun wall trapped in the plasma armature. The test has been done on a 1.2 m long railgun with a 3.2-mm-diameter bore. Results for hydrogen pellet acceleration show that at high currents the perforated railgun outperforms the unperforated one. Combined with a newly designed cryogenic pellet generator and the first stage gas gun, a solid hydrogen pellet velocity of 2.46 km/s has been achieved on the 1.2-m railgun.
DOE Contract Number:
FG02-84ER52111
OSTI ID:
5871688
Report Number(s):
CONF-9204102--
Conference Information:
Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Magnetics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States) Journal Volume: 29:1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English