Comparison of the Recoil of Conventional and Electromagnetic Cannon

Edward M Schmidt

doi:10.1155/2001/590948

Abstract

The recoil from an electromagnetic (EM) railgun is discussed and compared with that from conventional, propellant gas driven cannon. It is shown that, under similar launch conditions, the recoil of the EM gun is less than that of the powder gun; however, use of a muzzle brake on a powder gun can alter this relative behavior.

Highlights

Electromagnetic launchers have experienced renewed interest over the past ten to fifteen years
The time integral of this force is the recoil impulse and for a powder gun is equal to the momentum imparted to both the projectile and the propellant gases as they exit the muzzle
There is the potential to decrease the recoil impulse through the use of a muzzle brake

Summary

Introduction

Electromagnetic launchers have experienced renewed interest over the past ten to fifteen years. The two main classes of electromagnetic launcher are the coil gun and the railgun Within the latter, there are many configurations of rails such as simple, augmented, transaugmented, contraaugmented, etc. Only simple railguns are considered, Fig. 1 These have two conducting rails separated by adjacent insulators that run the complete length of the launcher. The magnitude of this force is FL = L I2/2, where L is the inductance gradient of the rails (typical values are 0.35–0.55 μH/m) and I is the current in amperes. The current is provided by a suitable pulsed power system. This could be a capacitor bank, battery-inductor array, or a rotating machine such as an homopolar generator or compulsator.

Recoil

Muzzle brakes

Conclusions