Recent advances in large railgun structures and materials technology

The recent progress in large high-energy railgun barrel structures and materials that will contribute to meeting performance, accuracy, lifetime, reliability, maintainability, and weight system requirements are reviewed. The alternative barrel structural containment approaches, including bolted, passively prestressed, hydraulically prestressed, laminated, and combinations of these, are discussed and their merits compared. The concurrent engineering approach that iterates advanced modeling and analysis techniques with barrel design is reviewed. Important requirements for railgun bore insulator and conductor materials and some recent progress in meeting material property goals are reviewed