The HART I augmented electric gun facility

Author

Fikse, D.A. ; Ciesar, J.A. ; Wehrli, H.A. ; Riemersma, H. ; Docherty, E.F. ; Pipich, C.W.

Author_Institution

Westinghouse Sci. & Technol. Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Volume

27

Issue

1

fYear

1991

fDate

1/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

176

Lastpage

180

Abstract

A new augmented electric gun system has been commissioned. This system, called HART I (hypervelocity augmented railgun test), is built around a double-augmented rail arrangement with a 1.27 cm square bore. It is powered by the SUVAC II 5.6 MJ distributed capacitor power supply. This arrangement allows operation in a simple, series-augmented, or transaugmented gun system configuration. The objective of this facility is to perform materials research, augmentation studies, and armature development in the 10 km/s regime. Armature masses of 2 to 4 g will be accelerated in a 4 m long barrel. Baseline bore materials will begin with conventional G9/GlidCop systems and then move into pyrolytic boron nitride/refractory materials. Hybrids, plasma, and ablation stabilized armature systems are planned. The gun system is instrumented with plasma and rail B-dot probes for in-bore velocity measurements. In addition, breech and muzzle voltages, currents, and external velocities are measured. The HART I system is currently performing hypervelocity experiments to verify the augmentation models

Keywords

capacitor storage; electromagnetic launchers; plasma devices; power supplies to apparatus; 1.27 cm; 10000 m/s; 5.6 MJ; G9/GlidCop systems; HART I augmented electric gun facility; SUVAC II; ablation stabilized armature systems; breech current; breech voltage; current measurement; distributed capacitor power supply; hypervelocity augmented railgun test; in-bore velocity measurements; materials research; muzzle current; muzzle voltage; pyrolytic boron nitride; rail B-dot probes; refractory materials; series-augmented gun system; square bore; transaugmented gun system; voltage measurement; Boring; Plasma accelerators; Plasma materials processing; Plasma measurements; Power capacitors; Power supplies; Railguns; Rails; System testing; Velocity measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.101019

Filename

101019