Design, Simulation, and Testing of a Dual Stator-Winding All-Air-Core Compulsator

The focus toward advanced mobile tactical configurations for railgun power supplies has resulted in the evolution of five compulsator generations in the past 30 years from iron-core to air-core prototypes. However, the exact air-core field simulation and the complicated fabrication technique of an air-core compulsator are not clear enough for researchers. This paper presents a detailed description of a small-scale all-air-core compulsator, which has a novel topology. The unique feature of the all-air-core compulsator is that there are two armature windings in the stator, the primary armature winding for providing the main output pulse and the secondary armature winding for providing the voltage for self-excitation. This approach allows the optimization of each armature winding to its specific duty cycle for increasing the overall efficiency of the compulsator. The two armature windings are located in the stator and not in the rotor. The advantage of this configuration is that it is unnecessary to equip the large-energy-level brush-and slip-ring mechanism. It is necessary to improve the power density, stability, and life span of a system. The no-load and discharge simulation results of the all-air-core compulsator were presented. Then, the electrical and mechanical parameters were given. The process technology of the slotless windings and the subassembly of the stator and rotor were presented. The results of the pulse-excitation experiment validate the results of the simulation.