Developmental Studies on a Two-Stage Coilgun

This article presents the design, development, and operation of a two-stage induction coilgun developed at the Pulsed Power Laboratory of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India. The first two stages of a four-stage induction coilgun have been fabricated and operated in synchronization successfully, launching a 37-g projectile to 28.9 m/s using for each stage a 252-J pulsed power source (PPS). This article shows the computational analysis and the experimental results obtained using the two-stage coilgun developed. The following parameters, viz., number of winding layers of the drive coil, number of winding turns per layer of the drive coil, and the projectile length are varied, keeping the PPS parameters as well as the projectile’s outer diameter and mass fixed. The simulation is carried out using a finite element method (FEM)-based software, Ansys Maxwell, and the results are then experimentally verified. Finally, an empirical relationship between the projectile velocity and the charging voltage of the capacitor bank is presented in this article.