Railguns for equation‐of‐state research

It appears that a railgun can be used to accelerate an impactor plate to velocities of 10 to 40 km/s, which could generate shock pressures of 1 to 10 TPa. As a first step to determining the potential and limits of railgun accelerators for shock‐wave equation‐of‐state research, a joint team of scientists and engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have initiated railgun research. We have utilized a combined capacitor band and magnetic flux compression generator to power railguns and have demonstrated the feasibility of accelerating projectiles to ∼10 km/s. This paper reports the status of experimental research directed toward launching EOS impactors and achieving higher velocities.