FULL-BORE SIMULATION FOR PLASMA-DRIVEN RAILGUNS

We have embarked on a program to develop a full-bore simulation of the railgun plasma armature. The simulation will extend from the back of the projectile to the breech of the railgun, thereby treating explicit ly the entire bore. The extent of the armature will be unrestricted, a nd the armature will be allowed to grow into the background gas as dic tated by physical interactions. This paper documents our progress to d ate in achieving this full-bore simulation. Most of the activities hav e focused on formulating the defining equations and boundary condition s, and implementing and then validating a numerical technique capable of resolving the steep gradients that we expect to encounter in the si mulation.