Performance Improvement of a Coil Launcher

In order to improve the performance of a coil launcher, various cores and shells are considered in the structure design in this paper. Different geometry shapes and materials are loaded on the cores and the shells. A single-stage coaxial induction coil launcher is analyzed for simplicity based on Ansoft 2-D simulations. The conclusion can be summarized as follows. A magnetic core will improve the performance of a coil launcher greatly. Coil current and resistance loss of the system will be reduced while kinetic energy conversion rate and efficiency will be increased. A conductive core will reduce the performance because of eddy-current effect. A magnetic conductive core combines magnetization and eddy-current effect. Geometry of a core will also influence the performance of a coil launcher. In general, the greater the cross-sectional area and the length is, the better the performance. A shell takes little effect on the performance of a coil launcher, no matter what material and geometry is used. A magnetic nonconductive core with large cross-sectional area and enough length is suggested to be used in a coil launcher design. A detailed study will be presented in this paper.