Electrothermal light gas gun

An electrothermal light gas gun (ELGG) has been developed that has launched 2.0 g to about 7 km/s, 10 g to 4.6 km/s, and 17 g to 3.5 km/s with an efficiency of 32% from a 16-mm reusable steel gun tube. These initial experiments were with a single-chamber breech fed launcher. The gun is scalable to large bore sizes and to date has close to the performance of a conventional light gas gun but removes the need for a heavy pump tube structure. It also has the potential to exceed conventional LGG performance when configured as a launcher with distributed H/sub 2/ injectors, and a facility to explore this has been constructed.<
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