Development of a plasma armature railgun with two distributed power supplies

Abstract

We have been developing a plasma armature railgun with two distributed power supplies as the first step to produce a railgun with multiple distributed power supplies, which is considered as a promising tool for hypervelocities. The railgun has almost the same system and operational principle as those of the two-stage plasma armature railgun, which had been developed in our laboratory, except that the two power supplies are distributed along segmented rails or continuous rails. To date, we have performed 11 shots to study the railgun. For the operation of the railgun with two distributed power supplies, to control the generation of a compact plasma armature in the 2/sup nd/ railgun bore is the most important. In 8 shots the compact structure of the plasma armature was not generated due to a large amount of leakage of the plasma armature around the joint between the two railguns. However in the remaining 3 shots, the deformation of the railgun bore around the railgun joint, which is considered to be the main reason for the leakage of the plasma armature, was able to be suppressed. As a result, the compact structure of the plasma armature in the 2/sup nd/ railgun bore was generated. Based on the experimental results, we are now planning to perform the next-step experiment with a higher power supply energy.