Design and testing of the power electronics for the cannon caliber electromagnetic gun system

The University of Texas Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM) is in the final fabrication and testing phase of a power electronics system required to operate a skid mounted compulsator-driven railgun. Design goals for the self-excited air core compulsator include a 95 MW rectifier/inverter bridge for field coil self-excitation. Initial field coil seed energy is supplied by a 50 kJ capacitive discharge from the field initiation module. The field coil is passively protected from voltage transients by an array of metal oxide varistors. Other system power modules include the gun closing switch and explosive opening switch. This paper presents a brief system overview and detailed design of the rectifier/inverter bridge module with performance data from shots up to 6.