Chinese army scientists propose a super X-rail gun much more powerful than the navy’s
China’s plan to create electromagnetic weapon will double the force of the world’s first rail gun
The Chinese navy’s rail gun has shocked the world. It was mounted on a ship as early as 2018 – the first ever on the planet – and was widely viewed as a coup for China’s future weapon technology.
But power has become its curse. When the current is too strong, metal liquefies. Shells are capped at 15kg (33lbs).
It is too light to sink a ship. Too weak for war. Now the army has stepped in. Their solution: cross-stacking two rail guns into one.
This will nearly double the force. As bore pressure jumps, shells can hit 30kg at Mach 7, according to the project team led by Professor Lyu Qingao, associate professor with the Army Engineering University of PLA in Shijiazhuang.
“While the navy’s electromagnetic rail gun has resolved power supply challenges, its firing power still falls far short of the targets,” wrote Lyu and his colleagues in an April paper published in the Journal of Army Engineering University of PLA.
“This has hampered the technological advancement and military application of electromagnetic rail guns.”
Breaking the limit on rail gun power is not easy. Excessive current bites into the U-armature’s throat, melting aluminium. Magnetic fields rip the melted armature apart like a magnetic saw. Rails can also be scarred.
This traps the shell momentum to a fraction of the needed punch.
The army scientists said their twin-gun design can fix the problem.
Two U-armatures are crossed in an “X-shape”, bolted with insulation. Four rails square the bore (200 x 200mm), with two independent power circuits.
Simply put, they stack two rail guns vertically on top of each other in one barrel.
“Vertical fields ignore each other,” they wrote.
This unprecedented design can boost a rail gun’s power with “proven tech”, according to the researchers.
Their target is to accelerate a 60kg shell to 7.2 Mach. It can hit a target 400km (248 miles) away in six minutes, with impact speed exceeding Mach 4.
They filed a patent, “electromagnetic rail gun with X-shape armature”, last year in China.
But the X-rail gun has no live fire yet. And some challenges remain.
“Both armatures are driven by their respective electromagnetic forces. These two forces operate nearly independently, jointly propelling the projectile to accelerate and enabling the launch of the high-power electromagnetic rail gun,” Lyu’s team wrote.
“However, the close proximity of two mutually perpendicular current circuits may cause minor variations in current distribution within conductors – manifested as the proximity effect.”
The United States has quit the rail gun race, while Japan is testing a small-calibre prototype on a ship firing 300-gram shells.