High performance projectile seal development for non perfect railgun bores

The sealing of high pressure gas behind an accelerating projectile has been developed over centuries of use in conventional guns and cannons. The principal concern was propulsion efficiency and trajectory accuracy and repeatability. The development of guns for use as high pressure equation-of-state (EOS) research tools, increased the importance of better seals to prevent gas leakage from interfering with the experimental targets. The development of plasma driven railguns has further increased the need for higher quality seals to prevent gas and plasma blow-by. This paper summarizes more than a decade of effort to meet these increased requirements. In small bore railguns, the first improvement was prompted by the need to contain the propulsive plasma behind the projectile to avoid the initiation of current conducting paths in front of the projectile. The second major requirements arose from the development of a railgun to serve as an EOS tool where it was necessary to maintain an evacuated region in front of the projectile throughout the acceleration process. More recently, the techniques developed for the small bore guns have been applied to large bore railguns and electro-thermal chemical guns in order to maximize their propulsion efficiency. Furthermore, large bore railguns are often less rigid and less straight than conventional homogenous material guns. Hence, techniques to maintain seals in non perfect, non-homogeneous material launchers have been developed and are included in this paper