A high velocity electromagnetic mass launcher having an ablation resistant insulator
Abstract
A railgun having a composite insulator of laminated materials positioned between the rails is described in this document. The composite insulator is comprised of a series of conducting layers oriented with the edges toward the bore, or barrel, of the railgun and the wide edges away from the bore. The laminate is lain lengthwise along the rails and comprised of conducting layers of a high heat conductivity metal interleaved with an insulator material. The insulator material allows the composite insulator to stand off the voltages in a plasma armature even under high radiation flux conditions. Below the conducting material's ablation threshold the amount of ablation produced by the composite insulator is reduced by the reduction of insulator surface area exposed to the radiation. This allows better control of armature growth, mass acceleration by the plasma armature, secondary formation, and other factors normally found to retard projectile acceleration.
- Publication:
-
Patent Application Department of the Navy
- Pub Date:
- June 1994
- Bibcode:
- 1994padn.reptR....M
- Keywords:
-
- Ablative Materials;
- Electromagnetic Acceleration;
- Electromagnetic Interactions;
- Gun Launchers;
- Hypervelocity;
- Hypervelocity Guns;
- Hypervelocity Projectiles;
- Insulators;
- Laminates;
- Mass Drivers;
- Railgun Accelerators;
- Armatures;
- Edges;
- Electric Potential;
- Flux (Rate);
- High Temperature Environments;
- Patent Applications;
- Plasmas (Physics);
- Rails;
- Thermal Conductivity;
- Threshold Voltage;
- Launch Vehicles and Space Vehicles