Testing of the cannon caliber rapid fire railgun

A rapid fire launcher has been designed, built, and tested in single-shot mode for the Cannon Caliber Electromagnetic Gun (CCEMG) System. The 2.25-m long railgun has a rectangular cross-section (30 mm round bore equivalent) and has a series, two-turn augmented rail configuration. The gun is designed for rapid fire operation; three, five round salvos of 185 g integrated launch packages (ILPs) accelerated to 1,850 m/s with a minimum time between salvos of 2.5 s. Launch packages will be autoloaded at a repetition rate of 5 Hz via a hydraulic mechanism capable of up to 3,000 lb insertion forces. The railgun support structure and flexible buswork permit the railgun to recoil approximately 2 cm to mitigate the electromagnetic repulsion loads. Multiple 830 kA pulses provided from the CCEMG compulsator power supply require the gun to be liquid cooled for thermal management. Diagnostics for the single-shot tests include B-dots, flux rulers, voltage, and current measuring sensors. Other launcher diagnostics include rail conductor temperatures, coolant temperatures, and railgun preload mechanism (flatjacks) dynamic pressures. This paper presents the test results and general gun performance observations for single-shot, compulsator powered experiments.