DESIGN OPTIMIZATIONS OF A SMALL-CALIBER ELECTROTHERMAL ACCELERATOR

At the Lehrstuhl fur Raumfahrttechnik (LRT) of the Technical Universit y of Munich (TUM), a small caliber electrothermal accelerator has been operated for several years. This paper describes the accelerator and the measurement set up and gives experimental results for different de signs of the accelerator, To power the device, a 60 mu F or 352 mu F c apacitor bank is used. In the work up to now, special emphasis has bee n laid on the design of the discharge chamber and its supporting struc ture. Several ways to realize a stiff design are discussed and compare d experimentally. It can be shown that the performance of the accelera tor is drastically influenced by its design. A main goal of the experi ments described was to test the different designs to their limits, The maximum velocity obtained so far is 5.5 km/s for a 28 mg projectile.