Speaker
Sergey Poniaev
Description
See the full Abstract at http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2018ABS/pdf/P2.3006.pdf
Acceleration of mm-sized bodies in an electromagnetic rail accelerator
with a plasma armature
S.A. Poniaev1, B.I. Reznikov1, R.O. Kurakin1, P.A. Popov1, M.V. Petrenko1, B.G. Zhukov1
1
Ioffe Institute, St.Petersburg, Russia
At present, electromagnetic rail accelerators find a wide use in various fields of
science and technology [1-3] for accelerating bodies to hyper-speeds (for high-speed
collision research or for injecting fuel into a thermonuclear reaction zone, etc.), generating
high-speed plasma jets with various chemical compositions (for coating sputtering).
This report presents the results of experimental and theoretical studies aimed at
determining the limiting characteristics of the acceleration of a plasma armature with a solid
body in front of it or a free plasma armature in an electromagnetic rail accelerator with an
external magnetic field.
The investigations were carried out for the railgun channel filled with different gases
(air, helium, argon, xenon) under different pressures. The goal was to study the influence of
external factors on the acceleration characteristics. It was found that, starting from a certain
speed, the free (without a solid body in front of it) plasma armature in the channel was no
longer accelerated and its speed became constant. This can be explained by the fact that the
gas behind the shock wave in the channel became conductive, and some of the electric
current that had previously been spend on the acceleration of the plasma armature began to
flow in front of it, which had a significant effect on the acceleration efficiency.
The dependence of the achievable velocity on the pressure, gas type in the channel of
the railgun accelerator, and the mass of the accelerated body for the case of solid impactor
acceleration was obtained.
1. Hogan J.D., Spray J.G., Rogers R.J., Vincent G., Schneider M., (2013), Dynamic fragmentation of
planetary materials: ejecta length quantification and semi-analytical modelling, International Journal of Impact
Engineering, 62, 219–228.
2. Poniaev S.A., Bobashev S.V., Zhukov R.O., Sedov A.I., Izotov S.N., Kulakov S.L., Smirnova M.N.,
(2015), Small-size railgun of mm-size solid bodies for hypervelocity material testing, Acta Astronautica, 109,
162-165.
3. Chr. Day, B. Butler, T. Giegerich, P.T. Lang, R. Lawless, B. Meszaros, (2016), Consequences of the
technology survey and gap analysis on the EU DEMO R&D programme in tritium, matter injection and
vacuum, Fusion Engineering and Design, 109–111, 299-308,
