Optimal Design of Railgun Launcher to be Implemented as a Defensive Artillery Gun

Railgun launchers are emerging weapons that can be used as offensive or defensive weapons. Since the recorded speeds of firing shots of railgun launcher have reached several thousand meters per second, this launcher is a very good option to be implemented as a defensive artillery gun against enemy’s missiles. In this paper, first, the dynamic behavior of a railgun launcher is modeled by a system of nonlinear differential equations. Then, by numerical solving of this system of equations, the physical variables of the launcher in terms of time including location and speed of movement of armature (bullet), current injected in the rails and voltage of capacitor bank are calculated. Finally, the optimal parameters of railgun launcher in order to achieve the highest firing speed are determined by means of differential evolution optimization method. The results have shown that an optimally designed 300 MJ energy-stored railgun could achieve firing shot speeds of more than 5000 m/s which are suitable for defensive applications..