Title:

Electromagnetic Acceleration at the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis (ISL)

Speaker:

Dr. Markus Schneider

Affiliation:

French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis

When:

Tuesday, February 8, 2011 at 11:00:00 AM   Add to Calendar

Where:

MARC Building, Room Auditorium

Host:

Rick Cowan
rick.cowan@marc.gatech.edu

Abstract

Following an overview of activities at ISL, this presentation will address ISL achievements in the field of electromagnetic acceleration, which include the realization of PEGASUS, ISL's most powerful electromagnetic launcher (or railgun) installation up to now. The energy supply of this facility is a 10MJ capacitor bank consisting of 200 modules, each being equipped with semiconducting switches. At the time of its building, it was the first such power supply worldwide. The launcher has a caliber of 40mm and an acceleration length of 6m. PEGASUS has launched projectiles of several hundred grams up to velocities of more than 2.5km/s. PEGASUS is operating in DES (distributed energy storage)-mode, which allows realizing launch efficiencies in excess of 30 %.

Another important installation to be presented is ISL's RAFIRA, which will show that electromagnetic acceleration has great potential for multi-shot applications. This launcher has a caliber of 25mm and an acceleration length of 3m, which resembles the CIWS Phalanx, used for self-defense purposes on ships. A dual-use project aiming at space launch of small satellites will also be briefly discussed.

Of technical interest, the structural mechanics of railguns and a data-link between projectile and laboratory will be presented. With respect to the former, the transient magnetic pressure acting on the rails causes highly dynamic structural responses. The importance of such vibrations for the technology is pointed out with experimental and theoretical results to be presented. For the latter, ISL has recently advanced some low-cost data transmission solutions upon launch, including a direct data-link from COTS sensors mounted next to the armature to the laboratory.

Biography

Markus Schneider received the Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Jena, Jena, Germany, in 1998. Since 1999, he has been with the French–German Research Institute of Saint Louis (ISL), Saint Louis, France, where he was a Project Manager in a multi- disciplinary effort on plasma physics in conventional combustion-driven accelerators and electromagnetic rail guns from 2004 to 2009. Since 2007, he has been the Head of the Electromagnetic Acceleration Group with ISL. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 scientific papers. He is the holder of three patents. His research interests include pulsed power, sliding electric contacts, innovative metrology, and terahertz physics.