Physics Commons^™

Constructing And Testing A Permanent-Magnet Railgun, Yangfan Wu

Senior Theses

A modified magnetic railgun has been built and investigated. Permanent magnets were used to supply the magnetic field and a car battery was used to provide the current. The projectile has been successfully shot out. An alternative way to create a magnetic field is running a large current through the rails. Preliminary calculations revealed that the current will need to be enormous in order to provide a satisfactory magnetic field. For such a large current a huge capacitor pool would be necessary. Strong permanent magnets are available and allow us to bypass the difficulties of simply using the current in …