A New Electromagnetic Helical Coilgun Launcher Design Based on LabVIEW

In this paper, a new helical coil electromagnetic launcher is designed, which launches a magnet projectile without using any mechanical launching equipment, but by applying momentary varying current to the helical coil. For measuring the velocity of the magnet projectile in different stages, a LabVIEW-based software and hardware system is developed, and it is also used for improving the performance of the output velocity of the magnet projectile by changing the ignition time of the coils. This paper distinguished the new accelerator coil design and the software, which uses LabVIEW for the first time in this area. With the LabVIEW-based software, optical sensor data are acquired and processed, and ignition triggering control is carried out. Ignition timings on sequential four helical coils are optimized to produce the maximum acceleration in each coil, and thus the maximum velocity of the magnet projectile at output. An NI Data Acquisition 6010 data acquisition card is used for communication and gathering information throughout the entire launching process. In addition, the effects of changing the current magnitude, ignition time, magnet projectile length, and diameter to the output velocity of magnet projectile are investigated and discussed in detail.