Study on Wear of Electromagnetic Railgun

Abstract

Sliding friction wear of high-speed current-carrying is a key factor limiting the engineering of electromagnetic railgun, and is also a hot spot and difficult area for current research. In this paper, we simulate the internal ballistic dynamics and electrical contact characteristics based on multi-physics field effects and consider the actual working conditions such as Lorentz force, friction force and interference fit to simulate the motion of the armature in the bore. Based on the Archard wear model, a finite element simulation method combining HyperMesh and ANSYS is proposed to realize the wear prediction. The simulation results are compared with the experimental results to verify the accuracy of the prediction model. The results show that under the single firing condition, the wear is mainly concentrated at the end of the armature arm, and the rail wear is relatively light; with the increase of electromagnetic thrust, the increase of armature wear volume does not change much and is approximately equal; the armature wear volume is influenced by the wear coefficient, in which the armature wear volume increases about 190 times when the wear coefficient increases from 1×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-6</sup> to 1×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> . Therefore, in order to reduce the degree of wear between the armature and rails, the lubrication conditions should be improved as much as possible. This study provides a simulation method for the wear prediction of electromagnetic rail launcher, which is important for the engineering application of electromagnetic rail launcher.