Design of a Recoil System for a Railgun

The recoil force that causes the rearward movement of the gun is generated during firing a railgun as a conventional gun. According to Newton's third law, it should be equal to the electromagnetic force that accelerates an armature. It continues to act as long as current flows in the rails even when the muzzle arc occurs immediately after the armature exits. The recoil force in a railgun increases being proportional to the square of current as current increases. A recoil system should be installed to absorb the recoil force when it is so large that a carriage cannot withstand the load transmitted directly to it. Design and experiment of the recoil system using friction springs for a railgun are described in this paper. The space and volume to place a spring type of recoil system into the carriage are required relatively small to a hydraulic type and it has a simple structure. The recoil velocity of the railgun can be rapidly down due to the excellent damping characteristics of friction springs during two or three cyclic motions after firing. The load imposed to the carriage can be reduced to over one-tenth of the recoil force with 15 mm of recoil length when about 1560 N · s of firing impulse is applied.