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The navy did not completely abandon the railgun as they claimed. They are built into the deck of the Gerald R Ford supercarrier(s). Instead of inert slugs, these railguns fire airplanes in the form of an eletromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMAL), a very clever use of the technology.

Where should I get the capacitors for my railgun?

Does the size of the contact area of the rails, increase or decrease energy transfer vs things like friction and lorentz forces?

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should i try to make my rails real narrow or almost wrap around my projectile?

I've been doing research into these and it seems like people build them about the same except some have a row of magnets under them and some don't. It seems to work just fine without the magnets and I was wondering what difference they made. I asked a friend and he said I should put them on the top and bottom of the rails, but nobody else seems to do this. Can anyone help me understand what effects they have?

I think it would be cool to make an arcade game with a small railgun shooting the tokens. I only need them to travel like 70fps (as fast as a nerf gun) and travel a measly 4ft or so tops. The thing also needs to shoot thousands of times without burning up the rails. Is it possible to make a circuit or something that slows down the current inrush from instantly to like 250ms instead?

Usually the projectile closes the circuit, but it's the field that actually imparts the motion right? So couldn't you have a switch turn it on instead?

Hi, this is kind of a noob question. I know that it's important for capacitors to have high voltage, but what about capacitance? When calculating for small capacitance you get small energy and vice versa, but everytime I see a railgun, it has some beefy capacitors with relatively small capacitance. For example, rig I am planning to buy would have 1760 J with one capacitor (400V, 22mF) but capacitors people use have 400V and like 2000uF which is obviously a lot less energy. What is the reason for this and what option should I choose?

This sub is dead right now, but I think we can all agree that railguns are great, and that this sub deserves better. So whenever possible, tell people about this sub, and keep it active. Let's do this!

Hello everyone. I got some old medical capacitors, they are rated for 450V and 4600uF. I was thinking of connecting them in series to get higher voltage, but won't this significantly reduce their lifespan? 450V may be a bit low, but will 900 do?

Hi /r/Railguns, I just finished my master's thesis on railgun modeling (current profiles, current distribution, magnetic field, inductance gradient, force, and rail temperature) and thought you might be interested in it.

Here is a dropbox link to the thesis itself, and some MATLAB code that can be used to get the results shown there. The main folder there shows some fairly polished functions and example scripts. I also uploaded most of the files that were used to make the comparisons in the thesis ('Thesis Files'), but those are much less polished (its possible that some might not run). I'm by no means a CS major, so the code is likely less efficient than it could be.

From the 'Code Description' file in the dropbox:

The MATLAB code developed for this thesis is summarized here. In-depth discussion of results and methods are presented in the thesis, and are not replicated here. This group of code contains somewhat polished functions that have been adjusted to allow other investigators to use, and example scripts which demonstrate how to run them. Each section describes the purpose, inputs, outputs, and required functions for each function used here.

Another group of scripts and functions has also been uploaded which are the raw files used to develop the comparisons in the thesis. Due to time constraints, more polish could not be added to these codes, and some messiness and obtuse differences between the two sets of code remain. These differences include variation in coordinate system, variable name, and function performance. Unfortunately, these differences are unlikely to be remedied due to outside obligations, but it is possible an update will be made by December 2017. If there is interest in these codes, the main files to run are “ComputeForceScript.m”, “InductanceGradientComparison.m”, “BfieldComparisonScript.m”, “RailgunRailTemperatureProfile.m”.

Here are some of the results if anyone is curious: https://imgur.com/gallery/CT1Fs

The accuracy of these codes is not guaranteed. The use of these for development of a physical railgun should only be done with an understanding of how they were developed, and is done at the user's risk.

Feel free to use these in any work you like, but reference where you got them.