Inductance calculations for tapered helical MCGs

There is recent interest in developing small helical magnetocumulative generators (MCGs) capable of generating high voltage pulses with short pulse lengths. However, as the diameter of these generators decreases their energy and current gains decrease due to increased resistive losses and difficulties in properly aligning the armature relative to the center line of the generator. One possible way to achieve these objectives and overcome the limitations of these small generators is to taper their stator. This, however, increases the difficulty in calculating the initial inductance of the generator. In this paper, a simple mathematical model is presented for calculating the inductance of tapered generators. The calculations are in good agreement with the experimental results