Pre-accelerator design by estimation of erosion

A parameter to evaluate erosion of the main acceleration rail of a railgun with a preaccelerator is introduced. The authors use transfer-charge-per-unit-length as the parameter in the calculations and use an augmented railgun as a preaccelerator. The results of this analysis show that the erosion of the breech of the main acceleration rail of a railgun can be greatly reduced by changing the turns of the preaccelerator to control current waveforms, and that such erosion can be satisfactorily evaluated with the transfer-charge-per-unit-length parameter