Development of an accelerating piston implosion-driven launcher

[摘要] The ability to soft-launch projectiles to velocities exceeding 10 km/s is of interest for a number of scientific fields, including orbital debris impact testing and equation of state research. Current soft-launch technologies have reached a performance plateau below this operating range. In the implosion-driven launcher (ILD) concept, explosives are used to dynamically compress a light driver gas to significantly higher pressures and temperatures than the propellant of conventional light-gas guns. The propellant of the IDL is compressed through the linear implosion of a pressurized tube. The imploding tube behaves like a piston which travels into the light gas at the explosive detonation velocity, thus forming an increasingly long column of shock-compressed gas which can be used to propel a projectile. The McGill designed IDL has demonstrated the ability to launch a 0.1-g projectile to 9.1 km/s. This work will focus on the implementation of a novel launch cycle in which the explosively driven piston is accelerated in order to gradually increase driver gas compression, thus maintaining a relatively constant projectile driving pressure. The theoretical potential of the concept as well as the experimental development of an accelerating piston driver will be examined.

[发布机构] McGill University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Montrai; QC; H3A 2K6, Canada^1

[关键词] Detonation velocity;Equation of state;Experimental development;Gas compression;Launch technology;Operating ranges;Scientific fields;Shock compressed gas