Nuclear engineering

Electrical engineering

Physics

Aerospace engineering

Automotive engineering

Electromagnetic coil

Artillery

Inductor

Engineering

Voltage

Railgun

Artificial intelligence

Composite material

Power (physics)

Barrel (horology)

Metallurgy

Materials science

Range (aeronautics)

Capacitive sensing

Muzzle

Fuze

Computer science

Projectile

Quantum mechanics

Muzzle velocity

Pulsed power

Armature (electrical engineering)

IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science

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.

Inductive Pulsed Power Supply for a Railgun Artillery System