Demonstration of a Reversible Helical Electromagnetic Launcher and Its Use as an Electronically Programmable Mechanical Shock Tester

A reversible helical electromagnetic launcher (R-HEML) that is able to accelerate and decelerate a projectile is presented and discussed. The R-HEML in this paper has a hollow-projectile geometry and has a barrel length of 750 mm and a bore diameter of 40 mm. The R-HEML is powered by a three-module sequentially fired capacitive pulse-forming network that has a total energy storage of 1 MJ. The projectile mass is typically on the order of 700 g. The largest measured acceleration is 8000 m/s², and the largest measured deceleration is 15 000 m/s². Pulselengths for the acceleration and deceleration pulses varied from 5 to 14.5 ms. A modified version of the R-HEML is constructed and used in an industrial setting to generate high-g shock and vibration pulses to characterize materials and devices. Utilization of the R-HEML in this manner is one of the first industrial applications of an electromagnetic launcher.