Railgun with steel barrel sections and thermal management system

By electrically isolating sections from the breech to the muzzle of a specially designed metal gun barrel (steel), the boundary conditions used in the 1984 paper by Kerrisk [1] are changed. The result allows a metal gun barrel to be located close to the current carrying rails while still maintaining high inductance per unit length (L´). Descriptions of two designs of two-rail open air railguns that use this result for an efficient gun are described. Each current carrying rail is supported by its own steel barrel section. For each case a thermal management system is included. The open gun bore is directly exposed to the atmosphere, or a gas ambient if a dielectric enclosure is used, along the gun´s entire length.