The STAR railgun concept

A novel concept for a staged augmented railgun is evaluated in which an external augmenting field would be applied to the bore of the railgun in addition to the self-induced magnetic field resulting from the current flow in the main rails. The augmenting magnetic field would be provided by multiple saddle-shaped coils located on the exterior of the gun barrel. These magnet coils, which would operate at high magnetic field strengths, would be transiently powered so that their magnetic field would only be present in the vicinity of the projectile. The energy contained in the coils would be transferred forward to successive coils as the projectile travels down the barrel. In principle, energy losses could therefore be minimized compared with other barrel concepts. However, a more detailed evaluation of this concept shows that very high voltages could be needed to power the coil, so that the concept may be unattractive for short barrels and high velocity applications.