Electrodynamic response study on railgun launcher based on electromechanical coupling model

Abstract

The electrodynamic behavior of a medium caliber railgun launcher has been studied based on an electromechanical coupling model, which uses a unified modeling method for both electromagnetic and electromechanical field. This model adopts a material equivalent method to simulating the sliding contact behavior for the in-bore armature. An embedded node encoding program during field meshing operation provides good load transfer accuracy between electromagnetic field and mechanical field. Dynamic properties of in-bore magnetic field are firstly simulated and a subsequent dynamic analysis is conducted by mapping element results from electromagnetic analysis step to structure analysis step. The electromechanical-elastic response of the barrel is studied under the excitation current. The numerical model has shown reliability compared to experimental results. Keywords: Railgun launcher, Sliding contact, Dynamic properties, Elastic response