Study of traveling wave tubular linear induction motors

In this paper, we review some major research results in traveling wave tubular linear induction motors technology, based on "open literature" publications, which were obtained in the world in the last decades. One database analysis shows that coil launchers are covered in 68 of over 1000 electromagnetic launcher papers published, referred to 53 of them in this paper. The research program includes studies of history, types, applications, theories and analysis, design, and power conditioning of coil launchers with emphasizing on traveling wave induction (linear induction launcher) one. In the theories and analysis section, a preview is given of current sheet model, current filament model, finite element method, and wavelet transform. In the design section, local and global optimisation algorithms and designing results is reviewed. In the final section, we review power conditioning of capacitor driven coilguns and generator driven coilguns, and concepts of "magnetic flux compression" for generating pulses required to efficiently drive the coil launchers and "double-fed induction launchers".