50-kJ Ultracompact Pulsed-Power Supply Unit for Active Protection Launcher Systems

The impulsive acceleration of active protection elements such as armor plates or other terminal ballistics interception devices can preferably be realized by single-stage electromagnetic launcher systems using pancake coils. The technology with controlled multipartite coil assemblies represents a new supplementary topic in the entire field of ballistics. However, the essential condition is the availability of modular high-energy-density pulsed-power supply units with low volume and weight. During the last years, modular structured energy packs have been built up at ISL as a basic installation for various applications in the field of pulsed-power electronics; in particular, they are developed to feed active protection launcher systems. Each power supply module comprises one energy storage capacitor, a thyristor stack, a corresponding number of crowbar diodes, and a well-designed coaxial power line serving as a pulse-forming network and current-limiting reactor. To provide high flexibility, these modules can be triggered separately and independently by fiber-optic transmitters with an overall jitter lower than 50 ns. This paper describes the basic design of a 50-kJ energy pack and the further developed setup with a strongly reduced overall height obtained by using a novel multichip thyristor. Additionally, a 2-D steerable launcher system supplied by these modules will be presented.