Improvement of railgun projectile using higher specific weight material

A projectile using a metal powder buried in a polycarbonate is used so that an impact experiment between materials of higher specific mass, such as metal and metal, may be carried out. The projectile could be accelerated above 6 km/sec and it was confirmed that the powder stayed in its original configuration in the polycarbonate base without any deformation during flight. To prove the effectiveness, impact experiments were performed in which the total weight and the diameter of the projectile, with and without the metal powder, are fixed for comparison. Using 2.5 cm thick stainless steel as a target, the produced craters are compared. The crater made by the projectile with palladium (Pd) powder is much deeper than the one with the simple polycarbonate projectile. Moreover, a two stage crater structure is obtained which implies that higher pressure and higher temperature impact has been realized.<>