IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 45, NO.

1, JANUARY 2009

381

Progress on Hypervelocity Railgun Research for Launch to Space

Ian R. McNab, Fellow, IEEE
Institute for Advanced Technology, The University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 USA
The Universities of Texas, Minnesota, and New Orleans, and Texas Tech University are undertaking research supported by the Air Force Ofce of Scientic Research on critical issues for a launch to space from a railgun carried on an airborne platform. The University of Texas at Austin is studying techniques to achieve hypervelocity with a goal of 7 km/s: So far, 5.2 km/s has been achieved in a 7-m augmented railgun using a preinjected plasma armature. Texas Tech University is studying distributed power feed concepts that will improve the efciency of launch for a long railgun: So far, 11 km/s has been achieved with a plasma arc in a ve-stage system. The Universities of Minnesota and New Orleans are investigating the aerothermal behavior of a 10-kg projectile for ight from a high-altitude launch into orbit: So far, the results show that an acceptable amount ( 15 mm) of nosetip ablation will occur. This paper provides an overview of progress in these areas; more details on specic topics are provided in companion papers. Index TermsAerothermal, high velocity, railgun, space.

I. INTRODUCTION

VER the last half century, thousands of vehicles have been launched into space using well-established rocket technology based on liquid fuels and solid propellant boosters. The advantage of this approach is that the rocket starts slowly from the surface of the Earth with a full fuel load and builds up speed gradually as the fuel is burned off. This minimizes aerodynamic and aerothermal loads while providing relatively modest accelerations that can be tolerated by humans and delicate payloads. However, this comes at the cost of the need for very large vehicles with payload ratios of only a few percent and launch costs up to $20 000 per kilogram. With advances in technology over the last decade, the desire to put many additional satellites into space existsbut the high cost of launching limits the ability to achieve this. One alternative for putting small (110 kg) satellites into space could be the use of electromagnetic (EM) launch technology to replace chemical propulsion. EM launch to space has been an appealing concept since the rst demonstration of hypervelocity launch in the 1960s and 1970s [1][4]. It turns out that the cost of fueli.e., electricityto do this job is remarkably low. For example, 1 kg launched to 8 km/s has a kinetic energy of 32 MJ. The cost of electrical energy to achieve this with an assumed electrical system efciency of only 30% (as can be achieved now in the laboratory)that is, an input energy of 107 MJis only about $2.50 for a typical utility electricity cost of $0.08/kWh. Of course, this ignores the capital cost of building an EM launcher as well as the operational costs, both of which have yet to be determined. Nevertheless, early estimates are that moderate costs could be achieved when amortized over a reasonable number of launches [5]. As part of the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) supported by the U.S. Air Force Ofce of Scientic Research (AFOSR), the Institute for Advanced Technology

Fig. 1. IAT airborne launch-to-space concept.

(IAT) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) is working with researchers at other universities to develop a hypervelocity EM launcher that could form the basis of a high-altitude launch system such as that shown in Fig. 1. In addition to IAT, the MURI team consists of the Center for Pulsed Power and Power Electronics at Texas Tech University (TTU), the University of New Orleans (UNO), and the University of Minnesota (UMN). To demonstrate proof of principle, the IAT is developing an EM launcher capable of accelerating a small (510 g) projectile to 67 km/s. TTU is developing a distributed-energy power-supply conguration that will improve high-velocity launcher performance and efciency. UMN and UNO are evaluating the aerothermal loads that a projectile traveling 7 km/s will encounter upon exiting a high-altitude EM launcher. An introduction to this research effort was provided in earlier papers [6][11]. This paper provides an overview of recent progress by the MURI researchers; more detailed discussions are provided in companion papers. II. BACKGROUND When modern railgun research began in the 1970s, it was believed that railguns in which solid projectiles are driven by plasma armatures should be able to attain velocities as high as 50 km/s, because similar velocities had been observed when arcs alone had been studied. However, by the mid-1980s, a velocity ceiling of 6 km/s had been observed by several researchers in experiments when solid payloads were used. The explanation is that this velocity ceiling for plasma-armature-driven payloads

Manuscript received September 26, 2008. Current version published January 30, 2009. Corresponding author: I. McNab (e-mail: mcnab@iat.utexas.edu). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TMAG.2008.2008601

0018-9464/$25.00 2009 IEEE

382

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 45, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

Fig. 3. IATs modied MCL core. (Left) Solid model. (Right) Assembled core.

Fig. 2. Plasma formation in the railgun bore [12].

TABLE I OPERATING PARAMETERS

is a direct consequence of ablation from the low-cost G-10 bore insulators that were used in those experiments. Radiation from ) caused an the plasma armature (at a level of ablation of the epoxy from these insulators, which caused the bore to ll with a hot dense neutral gas [12], [13]. This gas does not affect the performance of the railgun until, at high velocities and low pressures, the voltage across the railgun breech increases to the point where conditions for high-voltage breakdown are met. When this occurs, additional plasma armatures, called restrike or secondary arcs, form behind the main armature. These secondary armatures are retarded by viscous drag as they push the ablation products created in the launcher bore. This drag prevents the restrike arcs from catching up to the main armature, causing a signicant fraction of the applied current to be diverted into the restrike arc. This process, which prevents further acceleration of the main payload, is shown in Fig. 2. The research being conducted at the IAT under this MURI is focused on preventing ablation from the bore walls so that the velocity-limiting effect of restrike arcs can be eliminated. The IAT research philosophy developed for controlling bore ablation follows from that developed by Stefani et al. [14] and uses a multifaceted approach that includes the following. 1) Magnetic augmentation is used to reduce power dissipation in the plasma. 2) High-purity alumina insulators are used to raise the ablation resistance of the bore. 3) A preinjection of the payload is used to prevent ablation of the bore materials at low velocity. Magnetic augmentation allows the current transferred through the plasma armature to be reduced while the magnetic eld inside the bore is kept at a high level to maintain the EM accelerating force on the armature. This reduces the heat ux radiated to the bore insulators to a value that can be sustained without insulator or rail ablation. Because plasma armatures generate a high heat ux, insulator materials that can withstand this without ablating must be chosen, and alumina was chosen for this reason. Finally, the heat ux on the bore components from the plasma armature is increased substantially when the plasma armature is moving slowly at start-up. For this reason, the projectile must be preinjected into the barrel at a velocity of 1 km/s before the plasma armature is created behind it. Each of these three approaches required a separate subsystem to be designed, constructed, and tested. This was completed, and the three subsystems were integrated, leading

to recent successful commissioning tests, as described in the following. A fourth aspect of the approach to reducing restrike arcs is to use a distributed-energy power supply rather than a traditional breech-fed system. A distributed-energy power supply reduces the effective rail length driven by each power supply to a region near the armature, thereby preventing voltage application to the breech of the railgun once the armature has accelerated down the barrel. In a shorter launcher, like that being used presently at IAT, the need for a distributed energy feed is less critical. This aspect of the future EM launch-to-space system is therefore being developed separately by TTU. For a future full-scale system that could launch 10-kg microsatellites, the launcher will be substantially longerprobably 50 m, depending on the acceptable acceleration levels for the projectile and payload components. This will emphasize the need for the distributed-energy conguration for system efciency reasons so that the power system mass can be minimized. Once these launcher and power-supply approaches are validated and exit velocities of 67 km/s are achieved, the projectile can be expected to encounter very high aerothermal loads when exiting the railgun muzzle and ying to orbit. Researchers at UMN and UNO are currently evaluating how to overcome the effect of aerothermal ablation under these conditions. These research efforts are discussed in the following. III. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN This section provides an overview of experimental work undertaken at the IATmore details are provided in a companion paper at this conference [15]. Due to limited funding, the IAT

MCNAB: PROGRESS ON HYPERVELOCITY RAILGUN RESEARCH FOR LAUNCH TO SPACE

383

TABLE II INTEGRATED SYSTEM SHOT SUMMARY

Fig. 4. Plasma preinjector chamber and barrel. (Left) Solid model. (Right) Constructed hardware.

was unable to design a new railgun for the MURI studies. Because of this, an existing launcher already in use at the IATthe medium-caliber launcher (MCL)was chosen for these experiments. It was judged to be best suited to reach the full velocity goal (7 km/s) with low current and acceleration loads. The core designed and utilized for the MCL is shown in Fig. 3. Two of IATs three approaches to overcoming bore ablation were implemented in this modied MCL corenamely, the use of magnetic augmentation and alumina insulators. These approaches were implemented by creating a two-turn independently augmented railgun. The outer railgun core had a bore 40 mm bounded by rails and insulators. These area of 40 rails conducted the augmenting current of 800 kA and set up a large magnetic eld inside the inner core railgun. Because there was no armature to conduct the return current in the augmenting rails, a crossover was located at the muzzle end of the rails to transfer current from the forward rail to the return rail. The inner core structure formed a 17 17 mm bore, inside which the plasma armature was accelerated. Roughly 160 kA was conducted in the inner rails and through the plasma armature. The rail insulators for the inner core were composed of high-purity (99.5%) alumina because of its high thermal abla). The entire inner core was tion threshold (12 evacuated to 2030 torr. Since an unacceptable amount of bore damage would occur if the projectile were accelerated from rest using a plasma armature, a plasma-driven preinjection system was designed, constructed, and successfully tested. A plasma-driven injector was chosen to limit the amount of gas injected into the railgun bore behind the projectile since past experiments have shown that excessive gas from a light-gas gun preinjector can cause restrike arcs at the railgun breech [16]. The plasma preinjector (Fig. 4 and [17]) consisted of a polyethylene liner contained within a steel pressure vessel through which an arc discharge was initiated by discharging a current pulse into an aluminum wire. After the wire exploded, a plasma arc between the cathode and anode ablated a controlled amount of polyethylene from the liner and rapidly heated it to a high temperature. The resulting gas, at a

Fig. 5. Current waveforms (07082904).

Fig. 6. Velocity and position versus time (07082904).

pressure of 100200 MPa, accelerated the projectile at the entrance to the barrel. Measurements conrmed that the electrical conductivity of the plasma was high enough to adequately conduct the main plasma current; therefore, three capacitor modules were discharged into the primary rail breech as soon as the projectile arrived. Commissioning shots that integrated all three of the subsystems just discussed were performed in 2007. Table I summarizes the basic operating parameters of these experiments. The rst tests used a 3.2-m-long gun, while the 7-m gun was being built. All shots are summarized in Table II. The current waveforms for the third shot are shown in Fig. 5, while the positiontime data derived from the B-dots are shown in Fig. 6. Data showed that an average velocity of 5.2 km/s was achieved between the positions of 3.74 and 5.29 m, although a decrease in velocity was observed beyond 5.29 m. Based on the last two B-dots, it is believed that the armature separated from the projectile due to the decreasing propulsive force. The absence of any secondary arc following the projectile

384

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 45, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

Fig. 9. Plasma velocity in a breech-fed free-running arc railgun10 kA and various pressures. Fig. 7. 3.2-mm-thick steel target plate.

Fig. 8. Distributed power input concept.

in the last few B-dot traces is the most important result of these experiments since achieving a velocity above 5 km/s without the formation of any secondary arcs is a major step forward from results obtained in earlier decades. Since hypervelocities were achieved in these experiments, special precautions were taken to safely stop the projectile at railgun exit. A 3.2-mm-thick steel plate was set up 1 m from the exit of the gun to slow down the projectile, followed by more substantial plates beyond that in the catch tank. The punchthrough observed on the front plate in this shot is shown in Fig. 7 and is essentially identical to that on the two earlier shots. IV. TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY A future railgun capable of launching useful projectiles into space from a high-ying aircraft, like that shown in Fig. 1, will need to be tens of meters long to ensure that the acceleration forces can be tolerated by the projectile and payload. It is impractical and inefcient to power such a barrel only from the breech since the combination of resistive losses in the rails and unused inductive magnetic energy that is dissipated as resistive heating will result in a low overall launcher efciency. By distributing the power input to the railgun in multiple small power stages along the barrel, as shown conceptually in Fig. 8, current ow can be localized in a short region near the armature. This has the dual benet of increasing the launch efciency and reducing the probability of secondary arc formation [18]. This aspect of the MURI research program is being investigated by researchers at TTU, who have built and tested a distributed-feed free-running arc railgun [19][23]. The free-running arc railgun allows for realistic armature velocities (510 km/s) with existing capacitive storage. The major modication

to a previously developed solid-armature railgun to create the free-running arc railgun involved operation in a low-pressure environment ( 550 torr) and generation of the initial plasma to be accelerated. Once constructed, the railgun was tested in three congurations: breech feed, asynchronous distributed feed, and synchronous distributed feed. Details are provided in [23]. All of these congurations were tested with G-10 insulators, and restrike arcs were observed in all cases. Alumina insulators have only been tested in the breech-fed conguration so far, and restrike was not observed in that case. Fig. 9 shows the effect of ablation and restrike on the arc velocity for the breech-fed system using alumina and G-10 as the insulators. As expected, using the alumina resulted in higher arc velocities as a result of low ablation and no restrike. Heavy ablation with the G-10 resulted in a velocity reduction, most notably at pressures of 510 torr, where restrike drastically reduced the arc velocity. Increasing pressure slowed down the arc for both cases because more gas was swept up and added to the plasma mass. Accompanying the two waveforms is a third data set calculated from an equation which describes the plasma velocity assuming no ablation. Calculations made using this equation correspond reasonably well to experiments using the low-ablating alumina. V. UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA In the experiments undertaken at UT, only simple polycarbonate slugs were launched to study the fundamental aspects of plasma armature propulsion. Of course, any practical system will need to launch real projectiles that have the following elements. 1) A hypervelocity aeroshell that can traverse the ambient atmosphere. 2) A guidance, navigation, and control capability, together with some rocket propulsion capability that will ensure orbital insertion and/or terminal rendezvous. 3) A payload capability, probably involving microelectronics, to accomplish the desired mission. The required payload is a function of the mission requirements. Nanosatellites or possibly even critical space station or satellite resupply components could be included in the payload. To accomplish these tasks successfully, it will be necessary for the launcher to provide an environment that is acceptable for the launch package survival during launch and gun egress. Primarily, this will require acceptably low axial launch accelerations, but also important are lateral accelerations and balloting, as well as control of the muzzle blast during egress from the barrel.

MCNAB: PROGRESS ON HYPERVELOCITY RAILGUN RESEARCH FOR LAUNCH TO SPACE

385

Probably, the most critical issue that the launch package will face is transit through the ambient atmosphere at very high velocities immediately after launch. It is therefore necessary to consider either ablative materialssuch as a carboncarbon composite thermal protection system (TPS)or actively cooled concepts. Under this MURI program, researchers at two collaborating universities, UMN and UNO, have used existing and newly developed codes to model the aerothermodynamics of ablating TPS nosetips for slender high-beta ight bodies [24], [25]. The ight prole of a projectile launched from an airborne EML resembles a reverse re-entry with the velocity being largest where the air density is highest, in contrast with re-entry ights where the majority of the velocity is lost in the upper atmosphere before entering denser air. A notable difference between this ight prole and those of planetary re-entries like the space shuttles, which last several minutes, is that the ight time for the EM-launched projectile through the thinner atmosphere above the launch point is only a few seconds, which provides optimism that the projectile can survive. A. CFD Solver To evaluate the severity of the aerothermal conditions encountered by the projectile, UMN has developed a combination of a simple trajectory solver coupled with an adaptation of a 2-D axisymmetric computational uid dynamics (CFD) solver to simulate the physical environment experienced by a notional 10-kg projectile during the entire ight from airborne launch into orbit [26]. The CFD solver couples the simulation of the air owing around the projectile, surface interactions between the air and the solid heat shield, and the conduction of heat into the heat shield subsurface. The trajectory of the launch vehicle was found by specifying its initial conditions and integrating in time until the projectile leaves the atmosphere ( 60 km) or reaches a specied orbital height. The main area of concern for the projectile is thermal protection against the high heating rate on the nose. The large heating loads require the use of carboncarbon for the projectile heat shield, and the work by Keenan [27][29] was used as the basis of the CFD equations for modeling surface reactions and the thermal response of the heat shield. The CFD approach consisted of a solver for the uid owing around the projectile, a thermal response model for the solid heat shield, and a set of equations that coupled the two domains together. The coupling equations also accounted for the reaction of the uid ow with the solid surface and calculated the ablation of the TPS. The solver for the uid domain was adapted from a two-temperature nite rate chemistry solver developed by Nompelis [30] which included the following species: , , NO, , , , CO, CN, N, O, and C. Twenty-four reactions were used for the chemical kinetics model, as suggested by Keenan, and chemical equilibrium rates were found by curve-tting data tables [31] over the range of temperatures expected in the ow eld (up to 20 000 K). The surface chemistry of the carboncarbon involved three phenomena: surface catalysis of oxygen, ablation of the heat shield due to oxidation, and ablation due to the sublimation of carbonall of which act to erode the carbon ablator surface. By summing the mass production terms over all

Fig. 10. Fuel mass fraction required for injection rocket versus pre-injection projectile velocity angle. Each line represents the velocity of projectile before injection.

species, the surface recession was obtained. Few experiments have been conducted at ight conditions similar to those being studied here. The most appropriate were those conducted under the passive nosetip technology (PANT) program [32], which were undertaken at a velocity of 5.48 km/s. A comparison shows that the UMN code matches the PANT data fairly well (within 50%) for the stagnation temperature and recession rate at the pressures of interest ( 125 atm), thereby validating the present approach. B. Trajectory Estimation In this study, it was assumed that the desired nal orbit is a circular low-Earth orbit. The circular shape requires that the projectile velocity vector has an angle of 0 with respect to the horizon as it reaches the orbit altitude. Any other angle will require a rocket to provide an appropriately directed extra to inject the projectile into its nal velocity increment orbit. Depending on the angle of the projectile velocity vector , this additional correction can be quite large. Assuming of 250 s, Fig. that a solid rocket is used for injection with an 10 shows that, unless this injection angle is small, a large mass fraction of rocket fuel will be required for orbit insertion. This indicates that the ight dynamics of the projectile will be very important: A large mass penalty will be paid if the projectile cannot y in a trajectory that will give it a small value for before orbital injection. The purpose of this part of the study was to nd trajectories that reduced thermal loading on the projectile heat shield while minimizing rocket fuel mass due to the requirement for large injection velocities. The angle of attack of the projectile was varied from 0 to 5 to create a lift to turn the velocity vector of the projectile inline with the smallest possible before injection to orbit. The projectile geometries used are listed in Table III. Trajectories for these geometries were found for launches from 15 km. These trajectory estimations showed that some type of turning maneuver was necessary for the launch to orbit to minimize rocket fuel mass. This turning maneuver cannot be simulated in the CFD solver due to its axisymmetric nature. As a compromise, initial launch angles of 20 and 45 were studied, and it

386

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 45, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

TABLE III PROJECTILE GEOMETRY

TABLE IV DESIGN STUDY PARAMETERS

Fig.12. Final surface location for 7-km/s launch with 2-cm nose radius geometry.

Fig. 13. Stagnation back wall temperature over trajectory for 7-km/s cases. Fig. 11. Stagnation point recession over trajectory for 7-km/s case.

was assumed that the projectile would follow a ballistic trajectory out of the thicker atmosphere and, after a certain height, perform a turning maneuver where a lift would make the injection angle small. The main focus of this study was to understand the aerothermal issues of the airborne EM launch concept, not to nd exact design solutions, which will follow later. C. CFD Trajectory Simulations For this section, only one of the studies undertaken so far is presented here to illustrate the results: More details can be found in [26]. This example results for a 45 angle launch from a 15-km altitude. The geometry and launch conditions were varied, as shown in Table IV for launch velocities of 7 and 9 km/s and several TPS thicknesses. Only the details of the 7-km/s launch are shown here. The maximum stagnation point surface recession during ight along the trajectory is given in Fig. 11 while Fig. 12 shows the nal surface prole. The most important result is that none of the cases evaluated showed the TPS failing due to burn throughthat is, the total calculated recession was always less than the thickness of the TPS. The next most important performance factor is therefore the back wall temperature, which must be low enough to ensure that the payload and other important subsystems do not overheat. Fig. 13 shows the back wall temperature of the TPS at the stagnation line. For the 7-km/s case, the 3-cm-thick TPS has a back

Fig. 14. Projectile velocity over trajectory for 7-km/s cases.

wall temperature of 1000 K, which is probably still too high. (Interestingly, the 9-km/s case (not shown here) has a similar temperature contour and back wall temperature.) Fig. 14 shows that the velocity loss through the trajectory for the 2-cm nose radius case is 0.57 km/s and, for the 3-cm nose radius case, is 0.86 km/s for an initial velocity of 7 km/s, corresponding to a required rocket motor fuel mass fraction of 42% and 49%, respectively. Since the aerothermal penalty for launching at 9 versus 7 km/s is small compared to the required fuel penalty, the larger launch velocity is more attractive from this point of viewalthough this is more stressing for the launcher. Further studies will qualify the ability of launches at shallower angles and lower launch velocities.

MCNAB: PROGRESS ON HYPERVELOCITY RAILGUN RESEARCH FOR LAUNCH TO SPACE

387

long as the volume remains large enough to hold the payload mass and stagnation temperatures are acceptable. A preliminary comparison with the calculations by UMN indicated that, in all cases considered, ABRES overpredicted the total stagnation-point recession, compared to the results of Gosse [26]. Some of the differences are attributable to slightly different assumptions, but, even after resolving these, there were still differences in the range of 20%50%. The resolution of these remaining differences will be one of the objectives of future studies.
Fig. 15. Final ablated proles for r laminar ow,

= 2 cm, V = 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 km/s, launch altitude = 16 km, and launch angle = 45 .

VI. UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS

VII. SUMMARY The case for launching a projectile to space using an EM launcher in a high-altitude aircraft has been shown to be plausible from a thermodynamics view. It should be possible to select a heat shield conguration that will successfully protect the payload from the heating experienced during exit from the atmosphere and not consume a large fraction of the projectiles mass budget. In parallel, experiments with the UT approach to achieving hypervelocities appears promising, with velocities of 5.2 km/s achieved, while TTU has conrmed the benets of alumina ceramics as an insulator choice with distributed power feed experiments using free-running arcs at over 11 km/s. Clearly, further work is needed in all areas to ensure future success. It is hoped that this work will be conducted under MURI funding over the next two years. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was supported by the United States AFOSR under MURI Award FA9550-05-1-0341, under the direction of Dr. M. Birkan. The authors would like to thank all the members of the MURI team, and the coinvestigators and team members for their contributions, particularly including Dr. J. Parker (SAIC and consultant to IAT), F. Stefani, Dr. D. Wetz, and D. Motes (IAT), Prof. J. Mankowski, R. Karhi (TTU), Prof. G. Candler and Dr. R. Gosse (UMN), and Prof. M. Guillot (UNO), without whom this paper would not have been possible. REFERENCES
[1] D. E. Brast and D. R. Sawle, Feasibility study for development of a hypervelocity gun NASA, Washington, DC, MB Associates Report MB-R-65/40, May 1965, pp. 7579, (NASA Contract NAS 8-11204). [2] J. P. Barber, The acceleration of macroparticles and a hypervelocity electromagnetic launcher, Ph.D. dissertation, , Australian Nat. Univ., Canberra, Australia, Mar. 1972, EP-T12. [3] S. C. Rashleigh and R. A. Marshall, Electromagnetic acceleration of macroparticles to high velocities, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 25402542, Apr. 1978. [4] I. R. McNab, Electromagnetic macroparticle acceleration by a high pressure plasma, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 25492551, May 1980. [5] I. R. McNab, Launch to space with an electromagnetic railgun, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 295304, Jan. 2003. [6] I. R. McNab, A research program to study airborne launch to space, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 486490, Jan. 2007. [7] F. Stefani, I. R. McNab, J. V. Parker, M. Alonzo, and T. Klatt, A plasma railgun experiment addressing launch-to-space issues, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 194197, Jan. 2007. [8] I. R. McNab, Plasma armatures for high-velocity launch, IEE Jpn. Papers Tech. Meeting Plasma Sci. Technol., vol. PST-06, no. 5474, pp. 8791, Aug. 2006.

The primary goal of the UNO effort was to adapt the ABRES Shape Change Code (ASCC) to the conditions of interest for airborne EM launch and demonstrate that ASCC can provide recession histories to guide preliminary designs of a TPS. The designs can then be validated and further rened with the codes currently under development by UMN. In the studies undertaken so far, launch trajectories and spherecone geometric parameters were chosen to match the UMN work so that a quantitative comparison of recession histories predicted by two approaches could be made. As a rst step, the UNO effort focused on adapting and applying ASCC to compute projectile trajectories and total ablation for relevant geometry congurations and launch conditions. The ASCC computations served two purposes. First, ASCC is a well-documented code that has historically agreed well with ight data for spherecone geometries and, therefore, can provide validation data for the code development work under way at UMN. Second, ASCC typically takes less than 5 min to run on a desktop or laptop computer; therefore, parameter studies can be efciently performed to screen potential projectile designs and then the preliminary designs rened with the more sophisticated methods under development at UMN. The preliminary studies adopted a sphere cone geometry of , cone angle , launch mass , length , 2, and 3 cm. The nosetip material was and nose radii . For all the computagraphite with density tional results presented in this paper, the launch angle was held . For each nose radius, trajectories were constant at computed for 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 km/s. The trajectory computations were terminated at 60 km, where previous computations indicated that the surface recession had abated and the nose tip had begun to cool. The initial temperature of the projectile was assumed to be 300 K. As an example, the nal ablated prole is shown in Fig. 15 for a launch alcomputed for titude of 16 km assuming laminar ow. This can be compared with the UMN calculations (Fig. 12). The lateral recession on the conical section of the projectile was small. over the trajectories were 423, 891, and 1375 km/s The -, 2-, and 3-cm nose radii, from 16 to 60 km for the respectively. Clearly, that additional velocity decrement for the larger nose radii would require additional propellant mass; therefore, it appears that smaller nose radii are preferable as

388

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 45, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009

[9] I. R. McNab, F. Stefani, and D. A. Wetz, Access to space using electromagnetic launchers, in Proc. 7th Int. Symp. Launcher Technol., Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 25, 2007. [10] D. A. Wetz, F. Stefani, D. Motes, J. V. Parker, and I. R. McNab, Development of a plasma railgun for affordable and rapid access to space, in Proc. 16th IEEE Int. Pulsed Power Conf., Albuquerque, NM, Jun. 1722, 2007, p. 1015. [11] I. R. McNab, Plasma armatures for high velocity launchThe inuence of materials, in Proc. 1st Euro-Asian Pulsed Power Conf., Chengdu, China, Sep. 1823, 2006. [12] J. V. Parker, W. Parsons, C. Cummings, and W. Fox, Performance loss due to wall ablation in plasma armature railgun, presented at the AIAA 18th Fluid Dynamics and Plasma Dynamics and Laser Conf., Cincinnati, OH, 1985, Paper No. AIAA-1985-1575. [13] J. V. Parker, Why plasma armature railguns dont work (and what can be done about it), IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 418424, Jan. 1989. [14] F. Stefani, M. B. Schulman, R. E. Wootton, and J. V. Parker, Zeroablation tests on the HART augmented launcher, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 12071212, Jan. 1993. [15] D. A. Wetz, F. Stefani, J. V. Parker, and I. R. McNab, Advancements in the development of a plasma-driven electromagnetic launcher, in Proc. 14th Symp. Electromagn. Launch, Victoria, BC, Canada, Jun. 1013, 2008. [16] J. V. Parker, Performance loss due to electrical breakdown of preaccelerator gas, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 490495, Jan. 1993. [17] D. Motes, J. Ellzey, S. Levinson, J. V. Parker, F. Stefani, and D. Wetz, A study of electrothermal launcher efciencies and gas dynamics, in Proc. 14th Symp. Electromagn. Launch, Victoria, BC, Canada, Jun. 1013, 2008. [18] J. V. Parker, Electromagnetic projectile acceleration utilizing distributed energy sources, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 67106723, Oct. 1982. [19] J. Mankowski, D. Wetz, B. McDaniel, B. McHale, J. Dickens, M. Giesselman, and M. Kristiansen, A bench top railgun with distributed energy sources, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 167169, Jan. 2007. [20] B. McDaniel, J. Mankowski, D. Wetz, B. McHale, and M. Kristiansen, A bench top railgun with distributed energy sources and diagonostics, in Proc. Int. Conf. Megagauss Magn. Field Gener. Relat. Topics, Santa Fe, NM, Nov. 510, 2006, pp. 185190.

[21] R. Karhi, J. Mankowski, M. Kristiansen, D. Hemmert, and S. Holt, Real time feedback control system for an electromagnetic launcher, in Proc. Int. Conf. Megagauss Magn. Field Gener. Relat. Topics, Santa Fe, NM, Nov. 510, 2006, pp. 179184. [22] R. W. Karhi, J. J. Mankowski, M. Kristiansen, and J. C. Dickens, A synchronous free-running arc distributed energy railgun, in Proc. 16th IEEE Int. Pulsed Power Conf., Albuquerque, NM, Jun. 1722, 2007, p. 1016. [23] R. W. Karhi, J. J. Mankowski, and M. Kristiansen, Analysis of distributed energy railguns to suppress secondary arc formation, in Proc. 14th Symp. Electromagn. Launch, Victoria, BC, Canada, Jun. 1013, 2008. [24] I. R. McNab, G. V. Candler, and C. S. Barbee, Projectile nosetip thermal management for railgun launch to space, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 491495, Jan. 2007. [25] R. Gosse and G. Candler, Ablation modeling of electro-magnetic launched projectile for access to space, presented at the 45th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit, Reno, NV, Jan. 811, 2007, Paper AIAA-2007-1210. [26] R. Gosse, Ablation modeling of electro-magnetic launched projectile for access to space, Ph.D. dissertation, , Aerosp. Eng. Mech. Dept., Univ. Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, Oct. 2007. [27] J. A. Keenan, Thermo-chemical ablation of heat shields under Earth re-entry conditions, Ph.D. dissertation, , Dept. Mech. Aerosp. Eng., North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC, 1994. [28] J. A. Keenan and G. V. Candler, Simulation of graphite sublimation and oxidation under re-entry conditions, presented at the 6th AIAA and ASME, Joint Thermophysics and Heat Transfer Conf., Jun. 2023, 1994, Paper AIAA-1994-2083. [29] J. A. Keenan and G. V. Candler, Simulation of ablation in Earth atmospheric entry, presented at the AIAA, Thermophysics Conf., Orlando, FL, 1993, Paper AIAA-1993-2789. [30] I. Nompelis, Computational study of hypersonic double-cone experiments for code validation, Ph.D. dissertation, , Aerosp. Eng. Mech. Dept., Univ. Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 2004. [31] B. J. McBride, M. J. Zehe, and S. Gordan, NASA Glenn coefcients for calculating thermodynamic properties of individual species NASA, Washington, DC, NASA TP-2002-211556, 2002. [32] M. R. Wool, Final summary report passive nosetip technology (PANT) program SAMSO/RSSE, Los Angeles, CA, SAMSO-TR-75-250, Jun. 1975.