>>equivalent amount of destructive force as a Volkswagen Beetle traveling at 100 mph.<<
I wouldn’t want to stand in front of one, but it doesn’t seem like that would do much damage to a hardened target.
The story said 32 TIMES the force of a beetle doing 100.
beetle traveling at 100 mph 32 times over
Except take that force and concentrate the impact into an area the size of the round. To put the 32 megajoules in comparison, a .45 only has about 600 joules of kinetic energy. That amount of concentrated energy is staggering.... and that is before the consideration of a rapid succession of these projectiles hitting the same point.
Umm, 32 times over. In an area of 25 square inches or so.
The kinetic energy is Mass * Velocity * Velocity / 2.
Mp * Vp * Vp/2 = 32 * Mvw * Vvw * Vvw/2.
solving for Vp yields
Vp=100 Mph * sqrt(32* 2000/20) ~= 5657 mph ~= 8300 feet/second.
No wonder it smokes.
(Yes I know pounds is not a mass unit, but since only the ratio counts it doesn't matter what units are used, as long as they are the same for both masses)
Actually, the kinetic energy in a hardened slug traveling at those speeds is pretty impressive.
Think of the penetrator from an M-1 tank APFSDS round. It’s only a chunk of depleted urainium (IIRC, it weighs around 20 lbs) but it’s going about 5000 fps when it leaves the barrel. Yet it easily slices through Russian main battle tank armor several miles away and routinely causes a catastrophic secondary explosion that blows the tank’s turret off of the hull. There have been instances where the impact alone was sufficient to tear the turret off.
The rail gun’s velocity is even higher, so, even with a smaller mass round, the force of its impact is tremendous.
The real engineering achievement of the operational rail gun will be in its electrical system. The objective is to have it charge, discharge (fire), and reload/recharge over 30 times per minute. And each shot has 32 megajoules of energy. Producing, storing, and managing the sequenced discharge of that much electrical energy, that fast, is not easily done.
(APFSDS = armor piercing, fin stabibized, discarding sabot)
Actually, the kinetic energy in a hardened slug traveling at those speeds is pretty impressive.
Think of the penetrator from an M-1 tank APFSDS round. It’s only a chunk of depleted urainium (IIRC, it weighs around 20 lbs) but it’s going about 5000 fps when it leaves the barrel. Yet it easily slices through Russian main battle tank armor several miles away and routinely causes a catastrophic secondary explosion that blows the tank’s turret off of the hull. There have been instances where the impact alone was sufficient to tear the turret off.
The rail gun’s velocity is even higher, so, even with a smaller mass round, the force of its impact is tremendous.
The real engineering achievement of the operational rail gun will be in its electrical system. The objective is to have it charge, discharge (fire), and reload/recharge over 30 times per minute. And each shot has 32 megajoules of energy. Producing, storing, and managing the sequenced discharge of that much electrical energy, that fast, is not easily done.
(APFSDS = armor piercing, fin stabibized, discarding sabot)