Design criteria for brush commutation in high speed traveling wave coilguns

Conference · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1991 · IEEE Transactions on Magnetics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)

OSTI ID:5900681

Snow, W R; Willig, R L ^[1]

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1. EML Research, Inc., Hudson, MA (US)

Barrel current in a traveling wave coilgun must be commutated on and off and remain synchronized with the position of the armature coils. Brushes on the armature can be used to satisfy these two requirements. First, they provide synchronization of the currents by being physically attached to the armature coil. Second, they provide a means of shorting the turns of the barrel so that motion induced commutation can take place. Motion induced commutation is the process where the current in a shorted barrel turn is caused to rise or fall because of the voltage induced by the moving armature. This change in barrel current must take place during the time the turn is shorted by the brush. Residual current in the trailing edge of the brush must be made small at the instant the circuit is opened to minimize arcing. A set of design criteria are presented for designing a brush commutated coilgun so as to achieve the required synchronous commutation. The design variables include the barrel coil configuration and its pitch, the armature coil configuration and its number of turns, and the brush length. The number of turns in the barrel undergoing commutation at the same instant in time is directly related to the length of the brush. In this paper the results of applying the design criteria to a specific design are presented.

• OSTI ID: 5900681
• Report Number(s): CONF-9004136--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Magnetics (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States) Journal Volume: 27:1
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
700430* -- Fusion Technology-- Magnet Coils & Fields-- (1992-)
700460 -- Fusion Technology-- Heating & Fueling Systems
DESIGN
ELECTRIC COILS
ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT
Fu
Fuels-- (1992)
IMPACT FUSION DRIVERS
MAGNET COILS
MAGNETIC GRADIENT ACCELERATORS
PLASMA GUNS
PROJECTILES
PULSED MAGNET COILS
TRAVELLING WAVES