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Fall 2010 Senior Design Project

What is Senior Design?

Senior Design is a course that every engineering student at the University of Central Florida must go through to become an engineer. Senior Design is composed of two semesters that involve a project that incorporates the research, design, test, and implementation of a project. The length of the course is one year long and taken during an engineer's senior year in college. In the first semester students spend a majority of their time researching and writing a 120 page technical paper that details the approach which will be taken when constructing the actual project. The second semester involves the construction of the project with research as needed.





Project Summary?

The coil gun is a system that shoots a projectile using an electromagnetic field. The power source for the gun is a standard 120 V AC outlet which is connected to the primaries of a 1:4 step up transformer. The 480 V of AC power is converted to DC through a rectifier to charge the 5mF capacitor bank. Through a silicon-controlled rectifier the current pulse needed to generate a pulse to induce the field is obtained. The surge current from the capacitors bank to a coil wound around a barrel experiences a large current.The current pulse usually reaches around 600-900A. That current creates a magnetic field that magnetizes a steel projectile and causes it to be pushed throughout the end of the barrel.





      Project Specifications:


100 ft/s Muzzle Velocity
180 Degree Horizontal Motion
120 Degree Vertical Motion
FPGA Initializes Cap Charging
FPGA Guided Firing or Manual Switch
Accepts 120 V AC Input

What Inspired This Project?

The inspiration for the project came from the group's admiration towards the techonology of firearms. The group thought it would be innovating to develop a gun that was silent and did not need a suppresor to be undetectable. Since the gun is operated by electromagnetic fields there are no concerns with discharge flash. All group members have taken high level classes in EMF and power systems, they all found that it was very interesting.





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