MAGRAC: a railgun simulation program

A computer simulation code has been developed and validated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to predict the performance of a railgun electromagnetic accelerator. The code, called MAGRAC (MAGnetic Railgun ACcelerator), models the performance of a railgun driven by a magnetic flux compression current generator (MFCG). The MAGRAC code employs a time-step solution of the nonlinear time-varying element railgun circuit to determine rail currents. From the rail currents, the projectile acceleration, velocity, and position is found. The MAGRAC code was validated through a series of eight railgun tests conducted jointly with the Los Alamos Scientific National Laboratory. This paper describes the formulation of the MAGRAC railgun model and compares the predicted current waveforms with those obtained from full-scale experiments