Design and Analysis of a Novel Three-Coil Reconnection Electromagnetic Launcher

This paper presents a novel three-coil reconnection electromagnetic launcher (TCREL). Analytical calculations and simulation results indicated that not only does this model possess a higher structural strength, but also the launching efficiency is improved effectively compared with that of the traditional reconnection electromagnetic launcher (REL). In addition, take the TCREL model as an independent module; a toroidal REL (TREL) model can be obtained after several modules are uniformly placed and fixed around the circumference. The TREL model can reduce the magnetic flux leakage among driving coils, and further improves the launching efficiency. To verify the conceptual feasibility, two-stage TCREL and REL models were built and tested. The experiments demonstrate that the TCREL model possesses better launching performance than does the REL model; the former can obtain the desired launching efficiency of 15.818% but the latter only 8.248% in the contrast experiment. The experimental results are also in accordance with the simulation results.