Low voltage low current massively parallel high performance EM gun topology MEMS based manufacturing

摘要

A new concept for an induction type electromagnetic gun is proposed. MEMS technology is used to construct thousands of millimeter scale, 3 phase half turn independent structures which are individually powered by dedicated MOSFET H-bridges and dedicated Capacitors. While the individual structures see but a few hundred volts and under 2.5kA, the combined effect induces an accelerating magnetic field above 3 Tesla, on a correspondingly larger interaction area of the projectile circumference consistent with accelerating around a kg to a few km/s in a 5m long gun.The unique features of the system include; i) virtually no magnetic energy left in the gun behind the projectile; ii) no fringe fields external to the projectile common to rail guns; iii) accelerating area a factor of ~10 larger than rail guns; iv) reduced overall power requirement by as much as a factor of 3 due the reduced inductive components and IR losses. Other unique features include: no individual high current or voltage components are used; high current density low voltages MOSFETs are used. Also, since at no point is the power added electrically due to the massively parallel architecture, an extremely robust design with easily replaceable components is possible since the gun components and the power supply are one and the same. The mm circuit element scale is chosen for two reasons: i) the small pole size reduces the fringe field volume to that scale; ii) the power, voltage and current associated with each of the single turn motor elements matches favorably with that available from MOSFET bridges and allows for half turn low voltage low current geometries. MEMS manufacturing of insulated copper conductors in various substrates have been demonstrated. The concept has the promise of low cost EM gun systems at many different configurations from virtually identical parts.