Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Pulsed power supply system plays an important role in rail gun system as it gives an electrical energy to rail gun in order to accelerate the projectile with higher velocity. Nowadays the pulsed power supply system which feed the rail launcher is still large and it is important to think about the minimization of the stored energy. The pulsed power supply system that has well enough small mass and volume, yet can offer properly conditioned power, is a vital component for the successful accomplishment of rail gun system. All embracing works and researches are being carried out all over the world for the minimization of the volume occupied by the power supply and its weight. Capacitor based pulsed power supply systems are the most familiar form of pulsed power supplies system used in rail gun research for the past several years. The design of a 500kJ capacitor module pulsed power system, which can able to accelerate the projectile with a velocity of 1km/s to 1.5km/s, to be applied for the electromagnetic rail gun currently under investigation in India for surface fire support. In this paper an attempt is made to design a 500kJ PPS using computer simulation packages called PSPICE software in order to calculate the rail gun parameters such as acceleration of the projectile, muzzle velocity, peak current, current at exit, effective barrel length. Finally, this work gives some fundamental contemplation on volume and weight requirements of 500kJ capacitive PPS systems to be applied for speedy fire of electromagnetic rail guns.