Magnetic-probe diagnostics for railgun plasma armatures

Magnetic probes were employed on the first plasma armature railgun experiments, and they have been used continuously since then for position determination and qualitative determination of the armature current. In the last few years, improvements in experimental technique and analysis have permitted more accurate measurements of the plasma-armature current distribution. This paper reviews the various probe configurations in use today and presents analytic approximations for the dependence of the probe signal on probe location and railgun geometry. Rail current and armature current probes are compared and contrasted with respect to resolution and accuracy. Further improvements in measurement accuracy are predicted for close-spaced magnetic-probe arrays