A Novel Design of a Hypervelocity Launcher Based on Two-Stage Gas Gun Facilities

A new scheme of hypervelocity launcher was put forward in this paper by means of strong detonation.An explosive ring was fixed internally in a specially designed third-stage barrel in which the projectile launched by two-stage gas gun at velocity ranging from 6 to 7 km/s was able to be accelerated subsequently to a hypervelocity of 10 km/s or so.Based on hydrocode simulations,the shape of flyer and explosive ring was optimally designed.In addition,through the encapsulation of the sphere projectile by epoxy resin,the projectile damages resulted both from detonation-induced jet and spalling due to the characteristic of short pressure pulse imposed on centimeter-sized projectiles would be suppressed.The simulations illustrate that the optimized hypervelocity launcher has the capability of accelerating 1.03 g aluminum alloy projectile with a velocity of 6 km/s to 9.6 km/s,keeping the sphere-like shape with the velocity amplification ratio of 1.6.