This paper discusses the results of high-pressure (up to 350 MPa) railgun experiments. The gun is designed both to be capable of high-pressure operation without structural damage and to be readily disassembled for inspection, maintenance and component testing. Considerable effort has been invested to develop techniques to produce and measure smooth, extremely precise (greater than 5 microseconds of variation) bores. We have not deliberately varied bore precision on performance, but our experience suggests that if two otherwise identical railguns, one with a polished, high-precision bore, were fired under identical conditions, the precisely finished gun would achieve a higher muzzle velocity. Very high accelerations have been achieved (greater than 107 m/s2. A 2-g projectile has been accelerated to 5 km/s in a 13 mm square-bore gun only 1 m long. Projectiles with an L/D as small as 0.65 have been successfully accelerated. Projectiles with smaller L/Ds have not yet been tested to determine the minimum L/D which can be successfully accelerated. A number of different insulator materials ranging from common float glass to fused quartz have been tested.


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    Title :

    Testing of a high performance, precision-bore railgun


    Additional title:

    Test einer Hochleistungs-Elektromagnet-Kanone mit Praezisionsbohrung


    Contributors:
    Peterson, D.R. (author) / Weeks, D.A. (author) / Zowarka, R.C. (author) / Cook, R.W. (author)

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    1986


    Size :

    7 Seiten, 14 Bilder, 9 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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