railgun project

These are the animations i made in GMax for the presentation of my railgun project, i figured i might as well show them off here. It starts with a representation of a magnetic field around a wire, a demonstration of the Lorentz effect, and how a railgun combines these to propel a projectile (the + and - minus are switched, sorry). The magnetic field is represented by a green arrow, the direction of current is blue, and force is red. The next animation shows how the rails are also forced apart by the Lorentz force. Next i explain how i built the railgun, the injector system, and the capacitor bank. after that i show some cool photos and videos of tests, as well as some results of the experiment (the green round thing is a simulation of the magnetic field around the rails). The last part shows images of the rails after more or less 10 shots, there is some rail erosion, but it is very limited because of the low voltage and it only affects the first few centimeters of the rails. I dont know for sure what the black stuff is, it could either be aluminium oxide from the plasma, of soot from the burnt plexiglass enclosure. Some more interesting results: -the length of the discharge is 0.0002 seconds -the average plasma exaust velocity is 1000 m/s -the projectile experiences an initial force of approximately 100N -the projectile weighs 40µg -this means that the projectile accelerates at 2500000m/s² -the song is called Buddha Bar by Faithless



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoB2ZwzrSqM&hl=en