Analysis on Performance Improvement of Current Maintainable Meat Grinder Driving a Railgun

A current-maintainable meat grinder (CMMG) is a recent variation of inductive pulsed power supplies (IPPSs) suitable for real-time velocity measurement and control during the railgun launch process. In this work, we analyze a 400-kJ CMMG-driven 0.7-m railgun with the help of 3-D electromagnetic-mechanical coupled simulations and investigate the influence of inductance ratio (
$L_{1}/L_{2}$
) on the railgun’s muzzle velocity. It is observed that the muzzle velocity rises steadily up to
$L_{1}/L_{2}~\approx ~60$
and then nearly saturates, and ≈100 is the optimum value of
$L_{1}/L_{2}$
. Also, for input current pulses having the same time constant, the muzzle velocity is seen to vary almost linearly with the current-multiplication factor. We also compare the performance of this 400-kJ CMMG with that of a 400-kJ capacitive pulsed power supply (CPPS) driving an identical 0.7-m railgun. When the inductances of the CPPS and the CMMG are both equal to
$34~\mu \text{H}$
, we find that the muzzle velocity of our CMMG-driven railgun is
$8.45\times $
compared to the CPPS-driven railgun. When the inductances of the CPPS and the CMMG are, respectively, 34 and
$0.34~\mu \text{H}$
, the muzzle velocity of the CMMG-driven railgun is
$4.76\times $
compared to the CPPS-driven railgun. The velocity of the CMMG-driven railgun is greater than the CPPS-driven railgun in both cases.