Inductiveless Rail Launchers for Long Projectiles.

摘要

The paper presents rail launchers having substantially higher efficiency than railguns and much lower mechanical stresses in projectiles and launch tubes. Based on novel - inductiveless - architecture, which is especially effective for long projectiles, these launchers promise a number of weighty advantages such as: (1) Order of magnitude lower rail-to-rail repulsion, resulting in lightweight launch tubes; (2) No sabots, armature mass share only 25 - 35%; (3) Suppressed velocity and transient skin effects; (4) Low stress acceleration of launch packages by forces spread over long armatures; (5) Negligible parasitic inductive energy - no muzzle flash, no need for energy recovery; (6) Launch efficiency - ratio of launch package muzzle energy to supplied energy - up to 70%; (7) Net launch efficiency - similar ratio for in- flight projectile only - up to 50%; and (8) No need for forced cooling of launch tubes due to significantly reduced energy losses.