COILGUN TECHNOLOGY AT THE CENTER FOR ELECTROMECHANICS, THE UNIVERSITY-OF-TEXAS-AT-AUSTIN

This paper describes the engineering trade-offs performed on a coilgun design at the Center for Electromechanics at The University of Texas at Austin (CEM-UT). The concept used was that of a collapsing field accelerator. This concept was chosen because of its passive operation, and because it lent itself to existing power supplies. The trade-offs described, however, should be performed on any concept in order to achieve a successful design. The trade-offs described in the paper concern stress, maximum temperature rise in conductors, efficiency, time constants of energy storage element, and weight. An example of such a trade-off concerns the mass of coilgun armatures. The more massive an armature, the greater its ability to absorb resistive losses and the higher its time constant. However, larger armatures lower payload efficiency. Another trade-off concerns the fraction of armatures weight that is devoted to structure. More highly stressed armatures have more attractive electrical performance at the expense of parasitic weight. These and other trades are discussed. This program was conducted at the Center for Electromechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. Funding for this program was provided by U.S. Army ARDEC under contract no. DAAA21-90-C-0011.