Power converters for railguns

The University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM) has been developing power converters for use with DC railguns. Special design r ules have been established and demonstrated in the construction of laborato ry hardware. Power converter requirements for electric guns are dependent o n the characteristics of the power supply, load, circuit topology, and swit ching devices used. This paper discusses some of the design requirements pa rticular to these converters and shows why simple figures of merit (FOM's) developed in the early design of a converter are not valid. An alternate FO M that can be used to compare converters and judge development progress is offered. Use of this FOM requires that an adequate amount of design work be completed on a converter before it is applied. The FOM is applied to previ ously demonstrated converters. Possibilities for near term development of d evices and converters are examined and the potential results of that develo pment are compared to past work by using the new FOM.