Recent Update on the Multi-Physical Model of Electromagnetic Railgun

Abstract

This paper begins with a brief review of the development of computational codes on the multi-physical fields of electromagnetic railgun, followed by an introduction of recent updates in the modeling of structural dynamics. The multi-physical fields model was partly verified by experiments. The capacities of the computational code for the multi-physical fields were demonstrated by several examples. Some details of the launching process were illustrated, and the mechanisms of rail vibration, armature balloting motion, arc transition, rail gouging, and interface wear were discussed. The results show that the material nonlinearity plays a key role in modeling the structural dynamic behaviors.