Coilgun

A coilgun (also known as Gauss gun or Gauss rifle) is a type of cannon that uses a series of electromagnets to accelerate a magnetic shell to very high velocities. The appellation "Gauss gun" comes from Carl Friedrich Gauss, who formulated mathematical descriptions of the electromagnetic effect used by coilguns.

Construction

Coilguns, as the name implies, consist in a coil of wire or solenoid with a ferromagnetic projectile placed at one of its ends. A large current is pulsed through the coil and a strong magnetic field forms, pulling the projectile to the center of the coil. When the projectile nears this point, the coil is switched off and a next coil can be switched on, progressively accelerating the projectile down successive stages. In common coilgun designs, the "barrel" of the gun is made up of a track that the shell rides on, with the driver coils around the track. Power is supplied to the magnets from some sort of fast discharge storage device, typically a battery of high-capacity capacitors.

Related Topics:
Solenoid - Ferromagnetic - Capacitor

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