Comparison Between 2-D and 3-D Electromagnetic Modeling of Railgun

Abstract

This paper compares the results of 2D and 3D numerical calculations of current density and temperature distributions in electromagnetic rail accelerators of conducting solids with some typical armature shapes. It is shown that, for the cylindrical and saddle-shaped armature shapes, the 2-D description of the armature heating is in reasonable agreement with the 3-D description.