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Rail Guns

Bikewer

Penultimate Amazing
Bikewer
Joined
Sep 12, 2003
Messages
13,242
Location
St. Louis, Mo.
There was a discussion on these devices a while back. I just watched a segment "future guns" on one of those Military Channel programs.

No idea when the segment was put together, but it seems they are achieving some progress. The device they displayed developed some 10 million amps during the run-up to firing, and was launching a projectile similar to the depleted-uranium "penetrator" used in current tank guns at what they described as "a mile-and-a-half a second".
That would be nearly 8000 fps, a formidable figure.
A cast-aluminum "sabot" holds the projectile, falling away after it clears the weapon.

No information was given as to what is required in the way of a power source, or the potential rate of fire. They did show some concept drawings and computer animations of such a weapon mounted in a tank.
 
I would imagine 10MA would do a significant amount of thermal or buckling damage to the rails on each firing. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a single-shot apparatus requiring at least a partial rebuild after each shot.
 
Bikewer said:


No information was given as to what is required in the way of a power source, or the potential rate of fire. They did show some concept drawings and computer animations of such a weapon mounted in a tank.
Click to expand...
The reading I've done mentioned (for military uses) a special rotary generator (many tons of mass) using two separate rotary members to generate pulses of output somehow when one rotor was stopped(!) suddenly. Amateur designs use capacitor banks and high voltage supplies, but have longish recharge times. I think there is not much limit (theoretically) on the firing rate except that only one projectile can be in transit at a time.
The "rails" have to be extremely well braced to resist the spreading forces, and burning from the arc to the slug is a problem, also.
HTH

Dave
 
Soapy Sam said:
This is "progress" ?
Click to expand...

Yes, if we can develop a way to more quickly and cost-effectively use this to, for example, put satellites into orbit.

-TT
 
Bikewer said:
No information was given as to what is required in the way of a power source, or the potential rate of fire. They did show some concept drawings and computer animations of such a weapon mounted in a tank.
Click to expand...

Tanks are not the likely first adopters of such technology. For that, look to the Navy, and a return of the battleship using railguns.

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/07/return-of-dreadnought-nearly-hundred.html

"The electromagnetic rail gun which is being developed for employment in the Navy's next class of destroyers, the DDX, allows the entire ship's power output to be directed into an acceleration device which will shoot a projectile at anywhere from Mach 7 to Mach 16 clear out of the earth's atmosphere onto targets hundreds of miles away. They will be devastating."
 
Naval vessels would seem to be a logical use for such weapons.
Space warfare as well, should things ever get to that point. I imagine in vacuum the velocities achieved might be considerable.


As to whether increasingly-high-tech weapons constitute progress or not....Perhaps a question for the political forum.

Interesting from a technology standpoint.




I saw an article in a "gun" magazine many years ago, about two visionaries from the late 1800s (don't ask for details, my memory is far too fuzzy) who published a book of "super weapons of the future".
Their rather idealistic motive was that merely contemplating the horrors of war using such weaponry would dissuade mankind from even attempting to actually produce such devices.
They spoke of advanced, rapid-fire weapons, flying machines, huge cannon, and that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, none of the weapons envisioned by the authors came close to the actual weaponry used in WWI or WWII.
 
A close cousin of the railgun, the coilgun, is being researched as an alternative to steam-powered aircraft carrier catapults. (The Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, EMALS)
 
ThirdTwin said:
Yes, if we can develop a way to more quickly and cost-effectively use this to, for example, put satellites into orbit.
Click to expand...

I'd be very happy to be proved wrong, but I don't think railguns will ever be practical for launching satellites. For starters, you can't "shoot" an object into an elliptical orbit -- it would need a large mid-flight boost to get the tangential velocity it requires, so you'd basically have to launch an entire rocket out of the railgun. Smaller than a conventional rocket, of course, but still pretty significant. Apart from the mass increase, I'd worry about the thing blowing up.

Jeremy
 
This has been a staple of scifi for some time, of course. Usually, a very long "railgun" is envisioned, which would accellerate the vehicle much more gently than the weapon application.
The ususal scenario is an equatorial launch site built up along a mountain range or somesuch.

Heinlein used the idea in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as well, using such a device to deliver ores to Earth orbit from the Moon, and subsequently to bombard the Earth.

I have no idea if these things are at all feasible.
 
neutrino_cannon said:
Until they solve the barrel errosion problem, they really aren't that useful.
Click to expand...

I thought there was a discussion on that very topic right here on this forum sometime back... (?)

-TT
 
The barrels won't last more than three shots. The power source is usually a huge bank of high voltage batteries and capacitors. 15,000 fps is a more typical speed and the usual projectile size is under 5 grams.

Big whoop.

We've got a long way to go before we seem a Doom/Duke Nukem style railgun.
 
Bikewer said:
Naval vessels would seem to be a logical use for such weapons.
Space warfare as well, should things ever get to that point. I imagine in vacuum the velocities achieved might be considerable.
Click to expand...

Navy? Probably not. Water isn't steady, and if you're going to launch a precision inert (as in non-self-guided) weapon to hit something hundreds of miles away, you need a more stable base than liquid to fire it from.

Space launchers are actually a bit more problematic, if you think of it Newtonian terms. Each satellite would either have to have a reaction-mass guidance system to control it's reaction to such a release, or they'd have to be one-shot deals.
 
balrog666 said:
The barrels won't last more than three shots. The power source is usually a huge bank of high voltage batteries and capacitors. 15,000 fps is a more typical speed and the usual projectile size is under 5 grams.

Big whoop.

We've got a long way to go before we seem a Doom/Duke Nukem style railgun.
Click to expand...

Anything at 15,000 fps will hurt.;)
 
The projectile shown in the segment was decidedly not in the 5-gram range.

It was dificult to tell what the projectile was made of, it looked like aluminum. About the size and configuration of the depleted-uranium "penetrator" presently in use.

The fellow they were interviewing said the projectile in use would be of a "heavy metal" like tungsten. (I dunno why he didn't just say DU, maybe politically incorrect.)

They did mention that the copper "rails" were very strongly braced, and the "sabot" that held the projectile appeared to be cast aluminium.

They did not mention wear on the rails, but I wonder if this could not be overcome by effectively "suspending" the projectile between the rails? (Kinda like mag-lev trains)

As to naval use, I wouldn't envision this as a stand-off weapon, but rather ship-to-ship at visual range.
(A very dangerous place to be in proximity to a modern warship!)
 
jmercer said:
Navy? Probably not. Water isn't steady, and if you're going to launch a precision inert (as in non-self-guided) weapon to hit something hundreds of miles away, you need a more stable base than liquid to fire it from.
Click to expand...

Of course, I doubt that it's gnoign to launch an inert projectile, rather it will either have a guidance system or it will have active laser homing, or something of that sort.

Otherwise, accuracy through the atmosphere at 200 miles is going to be, well, nonexistant.
 
Bikewer said:
As to naval use, I wouldn't envision this as a stand-off weapon, but rather ship-to-ship at visual range.
(A very dangerous place to be in proximity to a modern warship!)
Click to expand...

Really, I'd think the old Iowa class would be more dangerous, in terms of delivered tonnage, armor piercing ability, and fire rate than most modern ships at VISUAL range. What's more, those old volkswagens full of HE that they used to deliver are hard to blow out of the air like you can stop a missile.

Now, at standoff ranges, look out for the modern ships. Ouch!

"Hey, captain, there's an enemy sub 3 convergence zones over there!"

"Got a firing solution?"

"Yes"

(several missles launch)

5 minutes later

'Got him, Captain!'

The first rule of modern naval warfare: Don't be detected. True?
 
Bikewer said:
As to naval use, I wouldn't envision this as a stand-off weapon, but rather ship-to-ship at visual range.
(A very dangerous place to be in proximity to a modern warship!)
Click to expand...

Hm... well, maybe, but I can think of cheaper and faster ways to take out an enemy ship in visual range. :)
 
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