Augmented hypervelocity railgun with single energy source and rail segmentation

摘要

An electromagnetically energized railgun system in which nesting and segmenting of the primary rails is combined with augmenting rails and crossover bar conductors and an inductorless single power supply arrangement to provide a high efficiency hypervelocity capable railgun improvement over prior railgun arrangements. The disclosed railgun apparatus uses a single power supply or energy source and achieves the desired near zero muzzle energy storage through a combination of inductive and resistive primary rail commutation, power supply pulsing, and augmenting rail inductive energy storage.