Range and railgun development results at LS&PA "SOYUZ"

Abstract

In the "Energophyzika" department, Russia, the LS&PA "Soyuz" test range was created. It was equipped with an inductor with storage capacity up to 12.5 MJ energized by a solid propellant MHD generator and a capacitor bank (energy capacity up to 6 MJ). These systems deliver currents of 1 MA and 2 MA, respectively. Diagnostic, recording, and autocalculation systems allow the use of as many as 120 data channels with acquisition frequency up to 10 MHz. Recent technical successes in railgun construction, using special methods to produce compact plasma armatures and high velocity trailing contacts, the creation of hybrid armatures, and the optimization of acceleration made it possible to obtain velocities in the range of 6.2 to 6.8 km/s (masses of 3.8 to 10 g) and 2.7 to 3.8 km/s (masses of 50 to 100 g) on railguns with a length of 2 to 4 m.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>