Parallel augmented railguns

Railguns can accelerate projectiles to high velocities. However, high courants are needed which may cause rail erosion. We show that the current intensities on the rail-projectile interface can be reduced by using parallel augmented railguns without loss of kinetic energy. A drawback is that the forces on the rails are higher than with simple railguns. This limits the use of parallel augmented railguns to small calibers, since the structural integrity of the barrel of big caliber railguns is a major problem. Part of the force on the projectile can be provided by an independant energy source, for which no pulsed current must be used. Therefore, the energy supply of parallel augmented railguns will be less voluminous.