RAILGUN REALIZATION OF A HEAD-ON COLLISION OF DIFFERENT MASS PROJECTILES AT SIMILAR-TO-10 KM S VELOCITY/

It is such distinguishing properties of railguns, especially of the '' rapid railguns'' (RRg), as (1) the acceleration is forced by electroma gnetic (Ampere) forces, (2) the small acceleration time if the operati on mode of extreme and constant-along-the barrel value of acceleration is used, (3) the possibility of launching bodies with masses in the r ange of 10(-3) - 1 g with velocities up to 5 - 7 km/s etc., that appea red to be very promising for realizing head-on collision of two solid bodies of different masses (10 mg and 0.45 g) at relative velocities i n excess of 10 km/s. Frame-by-frame photography of the collision proce ss has been made. Two main stages of the event can be revealed: 1) the crater formation in the more massive body with the ejection of vast m aterials; 2) the fragmentation of this body leading to the formation o f a slightly diverging stream of fragments with the direction of movem ent being almost as that of massive body before the collision. The sim ple method of diagnosing the fragment stream parameters based on the i mpact craters made by fragments colliding with the additional plastic shield has been used.