- #1
jmaniglia
- 9
- 0
Hey all,
I'm and Aerospace undergrad at Cal Poly working on my senior project, which has turned out to be more of a EE project than anything else.
Anyways, I'm building a capacitor bank for the firing of an electromagnetic rail gun. I'm attempting to make a PFN (pulse forming network) and capacitor ESR is KILLING me when it comes to buying a lot of cheap(ish) capacitors for my capacitor bank. Is there any way to practically eliminate ESR of a SINGLE capacitor. I am already connecting capacitors in series and parallel, and that can only decrease the ESR so much without buying a thousand of them. I would like to decrease ESR by orders of magnitude. Any thoughts??
One thought that I have had was connecting another resistor in parallel, that seems to increase current, but not the overall dampening of the system, as the PFN I'm working with is a slightly underdamped system, and the addition of capacitor ESR is causing it to dampen out to an unusable state.
PS: I am simulating these circuits using MATLAB and simulink, and it seems to be a very reliable method, so please do not hesitate on just throwing an idea out there with no mathematical backing. I WILL just throw it into MATLAB and see what pops out.
For any additional thoughts/questions about our railgun we are designing please email me at the email in my account here (jeffmaniglia@gmail.com), please don't post generic rail gun stuff in this thread, i'd like it to stay on topic.
I'm and Aerospace undergrad at Cal Poly working on my senior project, which has turned out to be more of a EE project than anything else.
Anyways, I'm building a capacitor bank for the firing of an electromagnetic rail gun. I'm attempting to make a PFN (pulse forming network) and capacitor ESR is KILLING me when it comes to buying a lot of cheap(ish) capacitors for my capacitor bank. Is there any way to practically eliminate ESR of a SINGLE capacitor. I am already connecting capacitors in series and parallel, and that can only decrease the ESR so much without buying a thousand of them. I would like to decrease ESR by orders of magnitude. Any thoughts??
One thought that I have had was connecting another resistor in parallel, that seems to increase current, but not the overall dampening of the system, as the PFN I'm working with is a slightly underdamped system, and the addition of capacitor ESR is causing it to dampen out to an unusable state.
PS: I am simulating these circuits using MATLAB and simulink, and it seems to be a very reliable method, so please do not hesitate on just throwing an idea out there with no mathematical backing. I WILL just throw it into MATLAB and see what pops out.
For any additional thoughts/questions about our railgun we are designing please email me at the email in my account here (jeffmaniglia@gmail.com), please don't post generic rail gun stuff in this thread, i'd like it to stay on topic.