Download or read book Development of an Implosion-driven Hypervelocity Launcher for Orbital Debris Impact Simulation written by Justin Huneault and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ability to soft-launch projectiles to velocities exceeding 10 km/s is of interest for a number of scientific fields, including orbital debris impact testing. Current soft-launch technologies have reached a performance plateau below this operating range. In the implosion-driven launcher (IDL) concept, explosives are used to linearly implode a pressurized steel tube, thereby dynamically compressing a light driver gas to significantly higher pressures and temperatures than typical light-gas launchers. As a result, the IDL has the potential to significantly outperform current state of the art hypervelocity launchers. This work will focus on establishing an understanding of the critical design parameters of the IDL with the goal of improving the velocity potential of the launcher. For this purpose, a computational gasdynamics solver capable of simulating the internal ballistics of the IDL has been developed. The elevated pressure and temperature in the driver gas lead to a number of non-ideal effects during the launch cycle, including expansion of the launcher walls, convective heat transfer, and gas leakage, which have a significant effect on launcher performance. These effects have been simulated by coupling the gasdynamics solver to loss models. Specifically, a structural hydrocode has been developed to provide a realistic model of reservoir and launch tube expansion, which has been identified as the main source of performance loss in the launch cycle. The complete internal ballistics solver will be used in conjunction with classical internal ballistics theory and experimental results, in order to gain valuable understanding of the key design parameters of the launcher and improve the design of the McGill IDL. This analysis has led to the development of an IDL capable of launching a 0.1-g projectile to 9.1 km/s." --