The study of three configurations of railgun

The primary task of railgun design was to determine what kind of railgun configurations. In general, there were three configurations: simple one turn (two rails) railgun, series-connected augmented (four rails) railgun, and series-connected multi-turn (four rails) railgun. In this paper, the study goal was to know which configurations can have excellent performances and simple structure. Within each of these railgun configurations, the bore shapes were all square and used rails were all rectangular cross section too. The inductance gradient and inductance, linear current density and peak current, force of armature, and acceleration of armature, were analyzed about performances, and the configuration complexity both on rails and armatures were analyzed too. Finally, the conclusions were presented, and the advantages and disadvantages of the three configurations were discussed. A more detailed study will be presented in this paper.