EM Gun Bore Life Experiments at Naval Research Laboratory

Meger, R. A.; Cairns, Richard L.; Douglass, S.R.; Huhman, B. M.; Neri, J. M.; Carney, C.; Jones, H.N.; Cooper, K. P.; Feng, J.; Brintlinger, Todd; Sprague, J.A.; Michopoulos, John G.; Young, Marcus; DeGiorgi, Virginia G.; Leung, Alan C.; Baucom, Jared N.; Wimmer, Stephanie A.

doi:10.1109/tps.2013.2250314

Cited by 29 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The present status of the NRL MTF railgun has been presented. The system is in continuous use for investigations on the physics behind high power railgun operation [6]. Multiple rail geometries and armature designs are tested at high power for both launch performance and rail damage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

NRL Materials Testing Facility

Meger

Huhman

Neri

et al. 2013

IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci.

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The Naval Research Laboratory performs basic research on high power railgun electric launchers. The program uses a 1.5-MJ, 2.5 km/s launch velocity railgun located in NRL's Materials Testing Facility. The railgun consists of an 11-MJ capacitive energy store configured as 22, 0.5-MJ modules. Each bank module has an independently triggered thyristor switch, series inductor, and crowbar diode and is joined to the railgun breech with coaxial cables. Individual bank timing and charge levels can be set to produce up to 1.5 MA peak current and 4-5 ms long current pulses. The 6-m long railgun used a nominally 5 cm bore diameter with steel or copper rails and epoxy laminate insulators. The muzzle contains a Tungsten-Copper arc horn to minimize damage from residual drive current upon launch. Aluminum armatures with acrylic bore riders are used for the launch package. Launch data is recorded digitally and analyzed using in-house computer codes. The system design and operation will be discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

NRL Materials Testing Facility

Meger

Huhman

Neri

et al. 2013

IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci.

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“…In order to achieve maximum flexibility of power supply between high power weapon, sensor and auxiliary systems on one side and propulsion systems on the other side, the development of integrated power systems started in the 90's and led to the application of integrated power systems on the UK Type 45 (Vanderpump et al 2002) and US DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers (Doerry et al 2015), and on the UK Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers (Sears et al 2010;Hodge and Mattick 2008). While the introduction of railguns and high power lasers has been long anticipated, both are still in the experimental stage of development (Tate and Rumney 2017;McNab and Beach 2005;Meger et al 2013). Nevertheless, these pulsed-power systems are expected on naval platforms over the next decade.…”

Section: Pulsed Power Weapons Integrated Power Systems and Their Conmentioning

confidence: 99%

Naval Engineering and Ship Control Special Edition Editorial

Geertsma

2020

Journal of Marine Engineering & Technology

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“…At the distance of 30cm from the end of the gun, a part of the groove has been extended into the insulation support area. In 2012, the U.S. Navy laboratory completed the steel rail wear test [2], the most serious grooving phenomenon area is 4mm from the edge of the track, which is also corresponding to the armature edge position, and the groove width is about 3-4mm. The test also shows that the pitting corrosion pit is centered on the edge line of the armature fin, and extends to both sides simultaneously.…”

Section: A Position Of Grooving Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 2004, R. A. Meger found that there were obvious wear and melting traces in the track erosion area, and the size was about 150 micron [8]. In the steel track wear test carried out by the Navy Laboratory of the United States, the profile of the cross section at different positions along the trajectory of the track was measured, and the total deformation of the track was taken into account, and the correction was made [2]. The most serious point of corrosion is about 300 micron away from the surface.…”

Section: B Depth Of Grooving Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Grooving Phenomenon Analysis of Series-Connected Augmented Sextupole Rails Material

Xue¹,

Shu²,

Liu³

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 4th Annual International Conference on Material Engineering and Application (ICMEA 2017)

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Abstract-Because the electromagnetic railgun's main current can reach several MA and the muzzle velocity is more than 2 km/s, launching in this harsh environment in barrel will cause grooving to the rail. Using existing experimental data of references, this paper analyses the position and depth analysis of the grooving phenomenon. So this paper design series connected augmented sextupole rails electromagnetic launcher to obtain high inductance gradient. High inductance gradient plays an important role in a novel electromagnetic launcher. Since inductance gradient is the decisive factor to super high speed and reduce high current, this study focuses on the design of launch model and inductance gradient distribution in moving area of double projectile. In this study we will simulate three typical series augmented sextupole rails connection mode, with finite element method and compare them. The theoretical analysis and numerical simulations indicate that the inductance gradient performance of the A configuration is better than other configurations. Therefore, this configuration could reduce the grooving phenomenon of sextupole rails.

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EM Gun Bore Life Experiments at Naval Research Laboratory

Cited by 29 publications

References 11 publications

NRL Materials Testing Facility

NRL Materials Testing Facility

Naval Engineering and Ship Control Special Edition Editorial

Grooving Phenomenon Analysis of Series-Connected Augmented Sextupole Rails Material

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