Numerical Simulation of the Performance of Electromagnetic Railguns

A numerical calculation model simulating the main performance of electro-magnetic railguns is described in this paper. The model takes into account the increase in plasma armature masses due to the wall ablation and the drags caused by various effects such as the friction between projectile and wall, the plasma viscosity and the air resistance etc. We characterize the drags by an experimentally determined coefficient and consider the plasma armature as a time-dependent resistance while neglecting the detail related with the plasma properties. The agreement between the numerical and the experimental results is rather good.