Pulsed-power and high energy plasma simulations for application to electrothermal-chemical guns

Under U.S. Army ARDEC contract DAAA21-93-D1003, Princeton Combustion Research Laboratories (PCRL) has recently completed the development of a PC-based, end-to-end electrothermal-chemical (ETC) gun ballistic simulation code called PPIB. PPIB is a time-dependent, lumped-paramter, electrothermal-chemical gun ballistic simulator, which has a one-dimensional plasma submodel. The code has been validated against a 4MJ pulsed power system, 30-mm ETC plasma experiments, and plasma capillary calculations from the stand alone Powell code. In addition, results obtained for high energy plasma simulations are also provided. Included in this study are: 1) the electrical transfer efficiencies of various plasma capillary tubes; 2) the amount of energy partitioned into internal, kinetic, and work energy; and 3) the radiant energy partitioning of the plasma inside the capillary tube during the electrical discharge. The study is concluded with an estimate of the overall energy delivered for the entire process of power supply discharge to electrical plasma generation and radiation for a given test case.