Optimizing study on the concave arc surfaced C-shaped armature with medium and small caliber

Abstract

Previous studies on solid armatures show that in a railgun system, concave arc surfaced C-shaped armature (ASCA) can improve the contact pressure and current distribution at the armature/rail (A/R) interface. However, concrete design or parameter study of the concave ASCA is rarely mentioned. In fact, besides the basic structural parameters for conventional C-shaped armatures, there are two more key structural parameters for concave ASCA, namely the radius ( r ) and the central angle ( θ ) of their surface arc.In this paper, three matching models of concave armature contacting with corresponding rail structure are discussed and compared, and consequently the best structure pattern of the contact is presented. Meanwhile, the radius and the central angle of the arc in the ASCA are proposed and analyzed. With a fixed railgun caliber and minimum thickness of armature trailing edge, the optimal θ and r are determined according to the current distribution obtained in simulation. The concave ASCAs for squarecaliber railgun of 20 mm, 30 mm, 40 mm and 50mm calibers are discussed, and their optimal structural parameters are presented respectively. Index Terms-central angle, concave arc surfaced C-shaped armature, current distribution, optimal structure parameter

Parametric analysis and design of the initial contact state of a 400kA pulsed current C-armature

“…The analysis results pointed out that the curvature fit of the C-type armature with an internally concave cross-section has less influence on the dynamic structural response of the armature and the rail. Xu Weidong [9] carried out a computational simulation analysis for small diameter armatures and investigated the through-flow capacity and firing rate of C-type armatures of different materials, and concluded that the size of the armature neck has a large influence on the through-flow capacity of the armature. However, the initial contact characteristics for the armature loading position were less studied, especially the influence of armature structure parameters [10][11][12][13][14] .…”