SpudFiles

Eh, jimmy, the concept of the ram accelerator is that the projectile is essentially a ram-jet engine. It flies through the fuel-air mixture, whilst burning it, increasing the muzzle energy of the round.

It encounters the fuel-air mixture as a stationary cloud, exactly like a ram-jet in atmosphere...

Admittedly, an evacuated bore is a lot easier to pull off, but the rewards aren't as great either.

boilingleadbath wrote:Eh, jimmy, the concept of the ram accelerator is that the projectile is essentially a ram-jet engine. It flies through the fuel-air mixture, whilst burning it, increasing the muzzle energy of the round.

It encounters the fuel-air mixture as a stationary cloud, exactly like a ram-jet in atmosphere...

Admittedly, an evacuated bore is a lot easier to pull off, but the rewards aren't as great either.

At least that is the theory. In practice the chances of getting it to work are pretty slim.

Since there aren't any practical guns that use this technique, and even as a jet engine it is pretty shaky, it seams unlikely you can get it to work using stuff you can buy at HomeDepot.

jimmy101 wrote:At least that is the theory. In practice the chances of getting it to work are pretty slim.

Since there aren't any practical guns that use this technique, and even as a jet engine it is pretty shaky, it seams unlikely you can get it to work using stuff you can buy at HomeDepot.

That's basically what I was saying in my last post.

On that note, however, I'm pretty sure the same thing was said about spudguns in general when they were first created. Someone had to try it.

This application is being tested for space launch applications. It would definitely take some time and effort to get it to work and it may not even work at all. We don't know unless we try.

boilingleadbath wrote:Admittedly, an evacuated bore is a lot easier to pull off, but the rewards aren't as great either.

This is something I'd like to try with my burst disk pneumatic, I was thinking of epoxying a small ball valve to the barrel coupled to a push-fit syringe adapter, plus of course another burst disk at the muzzle.

hubb017 wrote:On that note, however, I'm pretty sure the same thing was said about spudguns in general when they were first created. Someone had to try it.

Maybe. But "combustion spudguns" are a couple hundred years old. I doubt anybody told Alessandro Volta that something he was doing wouldn't work.

And, I suspect the first modern incarnation was done by a couple a guys during a beer drinking session, the old "hey billy-bob lets tape together a couple cans and try to make a cannon ..." scenario.