Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Re: PLAN Carrier Construction
Not too long ago we have heated debate about the feasibility of EMAL on new Chinese carrier. We never know for sure for years we have tantalizing photo of some kind of electromagnetic sleigh test facility at Tujiathang like this photo here posted by Raj47. I guess now we can confirm it is indeed an Emal facility
We know little as to the R&D on electromagnetic emal or their cousin Electromagnetic Gun Well according this IEEE article posted first by Shen at CDF, Shen if you are here I take the liberty of posting it here. China aside from US is the largest spender on electromagnetic gun with 22 institutes involve in the research and it goes as far back as 1981
Had McCorkle looked further afield, he might have run across Wang Ying of the Ordnance Engineering College, in China’s Hebei province. Back in 1981, Ying had come across the proceedings of Fair’s first symposium on EM launch and decided to make the subject his life’s work. At first, he found few takers for his ideas, but in the last decade, he and his former students have established electromagnetic launch R&D programs at 22 academic and military institutions in China. With Richard Marshall, he also coauthored two textbooks on the subject.
Indeed, Marshall and Fair were both delighted to find like-minded colleagues in China. In September 2004, Fair’s keynote speech at the China EM Launch Symposium, at Dalian University of Technology, drew a standing ovation. Afterward, the head of Dalian’s electrical engineering department gave him a tour of their coilgun test facility. Today China is arguably the largest center of electromagnetic gun research outside the United States. At the 13th International EML Symposium, held in May 2006 in Potsdam, Germany, the Chinese accounted for 52 papers, second only to the United States, which had 72.
One intriguing Chinese project is the coilgun-based armor under development at Harbin Institute of Technology. Tank armor today consists of a thin layer of high explosive sandwiched between two metal plates; when hit, it erupts, thereby destroying conventional weapons such as shaped charges.
The Chinese armor would be one step ahead of such reactive armor. It uses a sensor to detect incoming shells, and then a coilgun flings a plate of armor to break up the shell before it hits the tank. One problem with this approach is that the projectile must be made of something other than iron, because the coilgun’s magnetic pulse would end up heating the iron rather than accelerating it. Harbin researchers have tried other materials such as aluminum but found it melts easily and is too weak for use as armor. In their experiments where steel armor was married to an aluminum coil, ”the thrust force [of the incoming shell] not only didn’t decrease but increased a little,” according to a recent paper. [For other electric gun projects, see sidebar, ”Electromagnetic Launch Takes Off.”]
Comparable U.S. efforts in electric armor are classified, so it’s noteworthy that even this much is known about the Chinese program. But for whatever reason, Fair notes, Chinese researchers are surprisingly open about their work.
Not too long ago we have heated debate about the feasibility of EMAL on new Chinese carrier. We never know for sure for years we have tantalizing photo of some kind of electromagnetic sleigh test facility at Tujiathang like this photo here posted by Raj47. I guess now we can confirm it is indeed an Emal facility
We know little as to the R&D on electromagnetic emal or their cousin Electromagnetic Gun Well according this IEEE article posted first by Shen at CDF, Shen if you are here I take the liberty of posting it here. China aside from US is the largest spender on electromagnetic gun with 22 institutes involve in the research and it goes as far back as 1981
Had McCorkle looked further afield, he might have run across Wang Ying of the Ordnance Engineering College, in China’s Hebei province. Back in 1981, Ying had come across the proceedings of Fair’s first symposium on EM launch and decided to make the subject his life’s work. At first, he found few takers for his ideas, but in the last decade, he and his former students have established electromagnetic launch R&D programs at 22 academic and military institutions in China. With Richard Marshall, he also coauthored two textbooks on the subject.
Indeed, Marshall and Fair were both delighted to find like-minded colleagues in China. In September 2004, Fair’s keynote speech at the China EM Launch Symposium, at Dalian University of Technology, drew a standing ovation. Afterward, the head of Dalian’s electrical engineering department gave him a tour of their coilgun test facility. Today China is arguably the largest center of electromagnetic gun research outside the United States. At the 13th International EML Symposium, held in May 2006 in Potsdam, Germany, the Chinese accounted for 52 papers, second only to the United States, which had 72.
One intriguing Chinese project is the coilgun-based armor under development at Harbin Institute of Technology. Tank armor today consists of a thin layer of high explosive sandwiched between two metal plates; when hit, it erupts, thereby destroying conventional weapons such as shaped charges.
The Chinese armor would be one step ahead of such reactive armor. It uses a sensor to detect incoming shells, and then a coilgun flings a plate of armor to break up the shell before it hits the tank. One problem with this approach is that the projectile must be made of something other than iron, because the coilgun’s magnetic pulse would end up heating the iron rather than accelerating it. Harbin researchers have tried other materials such as aluminum but found it melts easily and is too weak for use as armor. In their experiments where steel armor was married to an aluminum coil, ”the thrust force [of the incoming shell] not only didn’t decrease but increased a little,” according to a recent paper. [For other electric gun projects, see sidebar, ”Electromagnetic Launch Takes Off.”]
Comparable U.S. efforts in electric armor are classified, so it’s noteworthy that even this much is known about the Chinese program. But for whatever reason, Fair notes, Chinese researchers are surprisingly open about their work.
