Harsh Environment Sensors for a Naval Electromagnetic Launcher

In order to enable the further development of electromagnetic launcher (railgun) technologies, Prime Research, LC (PRLC) proposes to further develop and demonstrate a collection of fiber optic based sensors which are fully compatible with the railgun environment. In particular, PRLC proposes to demonstrate measurement of magnetic fields, electric fields, pressure, and strain. Every one of these measurements is expected to have a bandwidth in excess of 1MHz, as well as be able to survive not only the electromagnetically rich railgun environment, but also survive the transient temperature effects associated with use of the railgun. This need has arisen due to the extraordinarily intense and rapidly varying magnetic fields which are present in an operational railgun. In the instance of the railgun which is used at the Dahlgren facility, for example, magnetic fields of up to (or possibly even in excess of) 30 Tesla evolve over timescales of a fraction of a millisecond. As a result, any conductive material which is present in the environment experiences tremendous electromagnetic induction, rendering electronic based sensors a dubious proposition, at best.