Railgun performance enhancement from distribution of energy feeds

Both simple and complex railgun simulation codes predict improved railgun performance when the electrical energy feed points are distributed along the length of the rail pair. The work reported is an experimental investigation to measure and quantify this enhancement for a 25 mm square-bore railgun using a solid metal armature. A test-bed railgun was designed to accept power feed at the breech and at any down bore location. The gun was powered by a 4.8 MJ capacitor bank that consists of 12 independently triggered modules. A test series that includes 16 shots with peak currents between 410 and 620 kA and projectile exit velocities between 2.3 and 3.0 km/s was completed for this study. This paper describes the railgun, the test series, and the data reduction techniques used to compare performance between breech fed and distributed energy feed point configurations. The compiled results support the theoretical prediction that a distributed energy feed railgun is more efficient than the simple breech fed configuration.<>