Research progress on advanced rail materials for electromagnetic railgun technology

Electromagnetic railgun attracts more and more attention due to its advantage in speed, cost, and obscurity. It is found that the rail should withstand huge mechanical and thermal shocks during the launching operation. The forms of rail failure are accompanied by gouge, grooving, transition, and arc ablation, etc. The service life of the rail has become a bottleneck restricting the development of electromagnetic railgun technology. A series of researches are carried out to solve rail failure, including analysing the failure mechanism and using various advanced rail materials. This paper provides a comprehensive review of rail materials, including material composition, preparation, microstructure, and properties. We begin from a short background of the requirement of the rail material. Then a detailed investigation of rail materials is described, and the performances of those materials are introduced. Finally, further development prospect of rail material is discussed.