Experiments to Measure Armature Wear, Part 1: Wear Measurements on the KJ202 Armature

摘要

One of the research objectives of the Hypervelocity Launch group during 1997 was to understand armature wear, with the eventual goal of developing a predictive model. To this end we conducted sixteen experiments to measure wear at various conditions. This report describes the first ten experiments which directly measured wear in a typical 'C-shaped' railgun armature. Section 2 of the report describes the objectives and our state of understanding at the outset of the research. We also comment on some prior work in related areas. Section 3 describes the techniques developed for making in- bore wear measurements. Section 4 summarizes the first ten experiments. Section 5 presents a physical interpretation of the data; our conclusion is based in part on the results of the mechanical wear tests, even though these are not discussed in detail in this report. Four appendices following Section 5 present the data from the experiments in a form that can be used to test models of armature wear.