Research on energy conversion efficiency of the reconfigurable reconnection electromagnetic launcher

Improving energy conversion efficiency (ECE) is of vital importance for the synchronous induction electromagnetic launcher (SIEL). For the launch process that the mass of payload is constant, there are many methods about the structural optimization of SIEL have been proposed to maximize the ECE. However, one optimized SIEL may be difficult to achieve same excellent launch effect when launching payloads of different masses. To realize the different launch purposes based on one SIEL device, this paper proposes a reconfigurable reconnection electromagnetic launcher (RREL) to effectively adjust the ECEs of payloads with different masses, the operable characteristics of RREL are described clearly through an example of a four-stage launcher model. Assume that the peak pulse current of the driving coils is 15 kA and the peak acceleration overload of the payload is 15 k-gees, the ECE characteristics of payload with the mass varing from 1 kg to 9 kg are simulated and analyzed through the finite-element method (FEM). The simulation results show that the payloads with different masses can achieve high ECEs through adjusting the reconfigurable operation states of the drive coil assemblies. For example, to obtain the best ECE of 1 kg payload, the switching states of the driving coil assemblies should be in “0 ∖”; When the mass of payload is 4 kg, the switching states of the driving coil assemblies should be in “0 1”; Similarly, the optimal ECE of the 7 kg payload occurs in the switching states of “1 1”. Finally, a small experimental platform is constructed to test. Although there are about 14.7% error exist between the experimental and the simulation results due to the mechanical losses, above technical scheme is feasible and has some reference significance for the development of SIEL design. © 2020 Elsevier Science. All rights reserved.