Abstract

The power supply for a railgun used as long-range artillery is investigated in this paper. As described in an earlier study, an 8-kg projectile is accelerated to 2500 m/s in order to bring it on a steep ballistic trajectory. To further investigate the electrical behavior of the proposed 25-MJ muzzle energy railgun, simulations with two different power supply chains, each starting with batteries, were performed. The more conventional approach uses a capacitive pulsed power supply (CPPS), the other investigated option is an inductive pulsed power supply (IPPS). An IPPS was designed in detail and set in comparison with a design of a CPPS. Parameters such as size, weight, efficiency, maximum rep-rate, and maximum shots per burst are estimated. Results show that a simple battery–inductor approach promises to be more compact but CPPS would be more energy efficient. Results give valuable support with respect to several design decisions.

Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call