NRL Materials Testing Facility

The Naval Research Laboratory Materials Testing Facility performs basic research on high-power railguns. The laboratory houses a 6-m-long, 5-cm-bore railgun capable of launching 0.5-kg projectiles at up to 2.5 km/s. The railgun is powered by an 11-MJ capacitor bank comprising twenty-two 0.5-MJ modules. The crow-barred banks can drive up to 1.5 MA in the railgun. The railgun core consists of steel rails with copper backers and epoxy laminate insulators. Aluminum armatures with acrylic bore riders are used for the launch package. Launch data are recorded digitally and analyzed using in-house computer codes. The system design is presented along with typical data.