Vertical cooling arrangement for electromagnetic launchers

Abstract

A three-dimensional transient electromagnetic and thermal analysis has been performed on an electromagnetic launcher (EML) with a moving armature. Coupled electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical equations are solved to capture current distributions, temperature response in the rails and projectile launch velocity. The thermal management of EMLs becomes more important in applications in which multiple shots are required. In this study we consider the first shot in a sequence of shots occurring every 5 seconds with the actual launch lasting only 3 milliseconds. This paper studies the effects of introducing a vertical cooling channels arrangement after the determination of the temperature field during the launch process. The temperature distributions at the end of the 5s cooling period are compared for three different channel configurations. A no-cooling situation is also included for comparison. These comparisons can provide some directions to optimize thermal management of the EML rail conductor.