Design and Implementation of a High-Speed Real-Time Position Detection System in Electromagnetic Coil Launcher

Electromagnetic coil launcher (ECL) is a specific application of electromagnetic launching technology and has broad prospects in the fields of new weapon systems and launching microsatellites. The acceleration force of the projectile in the ECL depends on the current of the driving coil and the projectile together with the mutual inductance between them, and to maximize the launch coefficient, each drive coil should be energized according to the projectile's movement position. In order to realize the closed-loop control of the ECL and improve the energy utilization, a new position detection system (PDS) based on fiber optic sensor (FOS) is designed in this article, which can obtain the armature displacement and velocity in real time during the launch process. Then, the main factors influencing the detection results are analyzed and studied. Finally, after experimental verification, the PDS designed in this article has an error of 4.2% and 1.41% in the measurement of the armature position and velocity, respectively. The results are of great significance to the realization of ECL engineering.