Simulation approaches for new experimental methods to investigate rail gun recoil

Abstract

Recent experimental work on model rail guns shows very little recoil upon the rails for the static case, where the armature or projectile does not move. This appears to be a direct violation of Newton's Third Law of Motion, and has been mentioned as being such by the experimenters. This paper proposes computer simulation exercises and a new, simple, comprehensive and conclusive experiment to test the nature of recoil for the dynamic case, where the armature does move in a model rail gun. The outcome of such experiments will either show a definite, visible and repeatable violation of Newton's Third Law of Motion; or solidify the accepted physics theories and obtain new insights into the nature of recoil from rail guns as a closed system including the power source.