A Novel Design of a Hypervelocity Launcher Based on Two-Stage Gas Gun Facilities

A new scheme of hypervelocity launcher was put forward in this paper by means of strong detonation. An explosive ring was fixed internally in a specially designed third-stage barrel in which the projectile launched by two-stage gas gun at velocity ranging from 6 to 7 km/s was able to be accelerated subsequently to a hypervelocity of 10 km/s or so. Based on hydrocode simulations, the shape of flyer and explosive ring was optimally designed. In addition, through the encapsulation of the sphere projectile by epoxy resin, the projectile damages resulted both from detonation-induced jet and spalling due to the characteristic of short pressure pulse imposed on centimeter-sized projectiles would be suppressed. The simulations illustrate that the optimized hypervelocity launcher has the capability of accelerating 1.03 g aluminum alloy projectile with a velocity of 6 km/s to 9.6 km/s, keeping the sphere-like shape with the velocity amplification ratio of 1.6.