Novel PFN with current turn-off capability for electric launchers

In the last years at ISL a lot of work has been performed in order to develop and install highly flexible pulse forming networks (PFN), based on capacitors as the energy source for electric guns (railguns, ETC-guns). In this paper, the principle of the novel pulse forming unit is shown and discussed. Besides this, a first prototype is presented together with its electrical features. A PFN consisting of four units was built and investigated. First experiments with this PFN were performed, while the discharge was made into a dummy load. The high flexibility of this pulse power supply is shown, concerning the shaping of different current pulses and the turn-off capability. Finally results obtained by PSpice simulation with a real railgun load are presented. The results show the feasibility of using the rectifier-based PFN to drive an electric launcher. Due to the current turn-off capability and the highly modular design, an efficiency enhancement could be demonstrated.