Modeling And Simulation Research Of Electromagnetic Railgun System Driven By Air-core Pulsed Alternator

As a new kind of kinetic energy weapon, the electromagnetic railgun breaks the speed limitation of traditional weapons. It has drawn the attention of many countries in recent years because of the natural advantages, such as faster launching speed, shorter accelerating time, longer range and higher accuracy. The electromagnetic railgun is an extremely complex system. Electrical, mechanical and thermal factors exist and interact during the launching process. The electromagnetic railgun has extremely strict requirements for its power supply system, rail materials and switches,so the cost of real launching experiment is beyond control. To provide reference and technical support for actual test, it becomes totally necessary to study the entire process by the means of simulation software. In this paper,we choose the Air-core pulsed alternator developed by our group as the power supply system and make use of the Saber simulation software for modeling and simulation.Firstly, this paper reviews the history, present research situation of electromagnetic railgun and its development direction in the near future, and introduces its composition and working principle, then establishes the circuit model.Secondly, this paper briefly introduces the Saber simulation software and its own programming language MAST. Then, the simulation model of Air-core pulsed alternator is established by using MAST after analyzing its mathematical model.Then, the factors which affect the performance of electromagnetic railgun are divided into different modules. After that, we respectively simulate their influence on launching speed and system efficiency, including rising time and amplitude of power system current, the resistance and inductance gradient, air resistance, sliding friction and the mass of armature. By this process, the complete load model is built.Based on the chapters above, the complete model of electromagnetic railgun driven by Air-core pulsed alternator is established and simulated. After analyzing the whole working process, the system performance and mutual effect between railgun-load and Air-core pulsed alternator are found, which can make the design of air-core pulsed alternator more reasonable. Finally, the RC absorbing device is designed to avoid the influence of the arc caused by the remaining current after launching.