Design, Construction, and Testing of an Inductive Pulsed-Power Supply for a Small Railgun

Abstract

Advances in high-power-density batteries have rekindled interest in using inductive store as a pulse compression system. Although these batteries are considered very power dense, they lack over an order of magnitude of power density to drive a deployable electric gun. However, one can add an inductive circuit to a battery bank to make a hybrid system that has a much higher power density than batteries alone. A battery-inductor hybrid pulsed-power supply boasts several advantages over pulsed alternators, as inductors are static and relatively easy to cool. Inductors are potentially more energy dense than capacitors, making a battery-inductor hybrid pulsed-power supply an attractive alternative to capacitor-based pulsed-power supplies. The opening switch has been a major obstacle in previous inductive store projects, but in simulation, a new circuit topology-the Slow Transfer of Energy Through Capacitive Hybrid (STRETCH) meat grinder-greatly attenuates the problem. This paper discusses the design, construction, and testing of a small-scale STRETCH meat grinder system, which was successfully used to power a miniature railgun