Development and validation of the ARDEC Army Railgun Modular Simulator (ARMS)

Abstract

A bstrcrct-An electric gun computer simulation code has been developed, tested and validated a t the Electric Armaments Division (EAD) a t the Army Research a n d Development Engineering Center (ARDEC), Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey. The Army Railgun Modular Simulator (ARMS) is a rail gun and pulse power supply numerical code that predicts the t i m e v a r i a n t r e s p o n s e of a c o u p l e d electromechanical system.The ARMS code is a personal-computer-based program which employs a user-friendly input interface called the "Designer" and a companion numerical simulator called the "Simulator".Both the Designer and Simulator use a bulldieg block, or modular, approach to modeling a complete EM gun system. With this approach the computer program is readily reconfigurable and a d a p t i v e t o t h e c h a n g i n g needs of t h e experimentalist and program manager alike.The output of the code has been measured against actual single-shot data and mainframe/P-Spice simulator benchmarks.An overview of the current status, featbres, p r o g r a m a r c h i t e c t u r e , m a t h e m a t i c a l rationale a n d future software directions for the ARMS code are presented.

Predicted versus actual performance of the model scale compulsator system

“…The need for an accurate performance model for rail gun systems was recognized early in the electric gun program [7,8]. Quite a bit of effort was expended to understand the rail gun and armature interactions and their effects on projectile performance [9,10,11].…”