Recoil in electromagnetic railguns

Abstract

Gun designers have long accepted and understood the fact that guns experience recoil when fired, and many ingenious mechanisms have been devised to cope with the problem. But hope springs eternal, and when confronted with a revolutionary new technique for accelerating projectiles, where the accelerating mechanism may be somewhat mysterious, the gun designer hopefully asks, Does it recoil?; knowing in his heart that it does. The more difficult question with regard to the electromagnetic (EM) railgun is Where and how do these recoil forces appear and can their location and distribution be controlled? That is the topic of this paper.