Optimisation of electromagnetic launchers

Coilguns, or pulsed induction accelerators are an obvious candidate for optimisation, due to the impracticality of manual design. The reason for this is due to complex interactions between coils, which can cause unexpected effects as a result of a simple design alteration. In order to perform a design optimisation, a computer model of the gun is required. Usually, coilguns are modelled using the current filament method, although recently, finite elements are being used. A variation on simulated annealing called very fast simulated reannealing (VFSR) significantly reduces the number of runs required, and has produced good results. VFSR has been demonstrated as a successful optimisation scheme for coilguns, producing superior designs to a local optimisation in a reasonable run time. Unlike local optimisers, a good starting design is not required, making it simple to run optimisations for different systems. Complex constraints can easily be taken into account within the optimiser, for example stress limits in the gun