The ISL Rapid Fire Railgun Project RAFIRA Part II: First Results

This paper reports on the rapid fire railgun (RAFIRA) project recently launched at French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis (ISL) with the aim of investigating the multishot capacity of the armature technology used at the ISL. The latter is characterized by the use of multiple metal fiber brush armatures. The project started with the development of a new medium-caliber launcher (25 mm t 25 mm) named RAFIRA and a suitable loading system, as described in part I of the set of papers. This part II summarizes the major results obtained with RAFIRA in a single-shot mode and briefly explains the method of optimizing its performance. The experimental realization of the loading system described in part I is presented. First results regarding the performance of this loader are presented. Suitable conditions allowing multishot experiments were worked out. This paper concludes by presenting the first multishot experiments performed using the ISL armature technology. Already in the first tests, RAFIRA has accelerated projectiles up to more than 1000 m/s while achieving cadences around 30 Hz. The sliding contact performance of these experiments is briefly discussed.