Three-dimensional thermal and electromagnetic coupled analysis of railguns

The authors describe an approach to simulating the behavior of electromagnetic rail launchers. The problem of the three-dimensional electromagnetic diffusion of the current is solved by discretizing the conductors in suitable elementary volumes, forming an equivalent network, whose electrical parameters are calculated by the subdividing geometry adopted. The thermal and the mechanical behaviors of the system are also considered, and the parameters of the network are updated step by step in time, taking into account the variation of the resistances and of the self and mutual inductances due to the motion of the armature, and the increase of electrical resistivity due to the increase in temperature