Sources based on capacitive energy storage often opt to use a simple inductor between the capacitor bank and the railgun to obtain first order pulse shaping. Nearly constant current pulses have been realized using a series of sequentially switched single stage Pulse Forming Networks (PFNs), distributed along the length of the barrel. Another common pulse source is based on inductive energy storage. This technique requires the transfer of excess amounts of energy (usually 5 to 10 times the projectile energy) from a primary source to a temporary storage inductor. An opening switch, itself intrinsically lossy, is then used to introduce the railgun into the storage loop. Provided the time that the projectile remains in the barrel is small compared to the L/R time constant of the system, a nearly constant armature current is possible. In all of these schemes, half or more of the energy delivered to the railgun is trapped in the magnetic fields behind the projectile. Transfer of say 80 % of the inductively stored energy between the rails necessitates extending the barrel to about 5 times its fundamental length, so this energy is often discarded in a muzzle blast.
Using pulse forming networks for railgun energy sources
Impulsformende Netzwerke fuer Magnetkanonen-Energiequellen
1986
10 Seiten, 22 Bilder, 6 Tabellen, 12 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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