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Practical Coilgun Design |
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FEMM
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FEMM - Projectile LengthWhat length of projectile works best? Now let's use FEMM to compare the forces on projectiles of various lengths. The Lua scripting feature can analyze lots of possibilities. This web page takes the example from previous pages and tests various projectiles. All my FEMM files are provided again to help you start comparing other variations. FEMM Model for Projectiles
We'll arbitrarily choose a solid iron cylinder of 2.25mm radius. In our previous web page we discovered the shape of the projectile doesn't matter, so this should be as good a projectile as any other and easy to model. Let's use Lua scripting again, and this time we'll try a range of projectile lengths. Assigning block numbers in FEMM makes the scripting possible. We have three block numbers in the projectile, so we can independently move the top, midpoint and bottom end of the projectile. We assign another number 4 to the coil, so we can select it for the force integration. The script uses the block numbers in selectgroup(n) statements. Some trial runs found a steep curve at shorter lengths, so I want to examine projectiles from 1 - 40mm in length in 2mm steps. AssumptionsOur model is fairly simplistic and, except for eddy currents, not too much different from the real world:
Pre-processor Lua Program
Post-processor Lua Program
Conclusions
To make a meaningful comparison of different projectiles, the spreadsheet normalizes "work" by the projectile's unit volume. This gives a yardstick of relative efficiency. The spreadsheet shows a graph of "work per unit volume" for various projectiles. The peak efficiency is at 15mm, or 75% of the coil length. Notice that very short projectiles (below 5mm or less than 25% of the coil length) are not efficient. The efficiency peaks over a broad range, but falls off with very long projectiles (above 30mm or more than 50% longer than the coil). These results confirm the rule-of-thumb that projectiles should be about the same length as the coil. Actually, the projectile should be about 25% shorter than the coil length, but the peak is very flat. The exact length is not critical. For example, you can see that a BB pellet would be very poor. At 2mm in length, it could get less than half of the available energy per unit volume than a longer projectile. By the way, you may have a different conclusion if you have a different goal than mine. My personal goal is to maximize energy conversion efficiency. But the total energy stored continued to increase with longer projectiles. So if you don't care about efficiency, and your goal is to deliver a "punch" to a target, then you should use a 40mm or longer projectile! Look in the Excel spreadsheet at the "Total work" field and you'll see that kinetic energy continues to increase with longer projectiles. Of course this requires much larger capacitors because the efficiency is lower, but it can be done with a single coil. |
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Last Update 2008-06-05
©1998-2023 Barry Hansen |