DESIGN LIMITATIONS FOR SMALL CALIBER ELECTROMAGNETIC SABOTED ROD PROJECTILES

In any application of electromagnetic launch, the armature package must conform to the barrel and provide the desired terminal performance. Finned long rod projectiles have proven to be viable candidates for both flight bodies and terminal effectiveness. This paper describes the criteria necessary for integrating a solid armature with a conventional type finned rod. An initial design is presented for a rod projectile, launched from a 15.24 mm (.60 caliber) augmented railgun with a sinusoidal driving current. Other designs are assessed in order to explore improvements and scalability to other bore diameters. We evaluate the final armature design considering: launch, flight, and terminal effects. Ohmic heating, structural limitations, and barrel parameters are also discussed. Flight and aerodynamic data are scaled from existing finned rod projectile data bases to calculate horizontal flat-trajectory performance. Finally, terminal effects are incorporated for a simple rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) target.