Effects of Armature Characteristics on Armature-Rail Contact Performance

Armature-rail contact performance determines contact resistance between the armature and rail in electromagnetic launch, and the contact resistance directly affects the efficiency of the launch system. Besides, poor contact performance between the armature and rail will results in erosion, gouging, and other issues in launch. These issues will induce surface damage for the rail, and affect the repetitive launch. So it's important to improve the armature-rail contact performance. As the characteristics of the rail are relatively stationary in the system, more research was done on the effect of armature characteristics (such as material, shape of the contact, thickness of the neck, and structure of the empennage). In this paper, method of combining ANSYS and pressure test paper was used to study the armature-rail contact performance. The dynamic changing process of the armature-rail contact state was observed by ANSYS, and the final contact state in the case of prepressed experiment was observed by pressure test paper and pressure analysis system. Results from ANSYS and pressure test paper would be comparative analyzed in order to get a more accurate conclusion in the condition of actual experiments. The conclusion of this paper is instructive on optimizing armature design and improving armature-rail contact performance.