Optimization for discharge sequence of pulsed power supply for electromagnetic railgun based on improved genetic algorithm

Aiming at the stable requirement of current waveform during launch, an optimization approach on the basis of improved genetic algorithm was proposed to design discharge sequence of pulsed power supplies. According to the discharge characteristics of powers with delay time, the launch process of electromagnetic railgun was divided into multi-stage, and the optimization of discharge sequence was performed. The strategies of elitist selection, adaptive crossover and adaptive mutation were adopted to overcome the defects of premature convergence and slow convergence in simple genetic algorithm. During the optimization process, the design variable space was dynamically reduced to further enhance the search capability. By the improved genetic algorithm, the optimization of discharge sequence was performed in each stage. In a case of railgun with solid armature supplied by multiple pulsed power supplies, the optimization results were obtained from different methods. The results show that the proposed approach has better search capabilities and gives better optimization solution, and moreover it increases the usability of optimization results for the realization of reliable current, which indicates the effectiveness for design discharge sequence of power.