Two-Objective Optimization Design for Pulsed Power Supply

A novel two-objective optimization design model for pulsed power supply (PPS) is proposed in this paper. The objectives are the muzzle velocity and the stored-to-kinetic energy efficiency. The design variables include the operating voltage and the trigger delay times between segments. The acceleration of the armature is constrained to lower than 106 m/s2. The optimization results for the muzzle velocity and the efficiency separately show that (1) the acceleration constraint has great influence on the performance; (2) wide current pulse yields high velocity but low efficiency; and (3) the operating voltage has to be increased to accelerate a heavier projectile to a certain velocity, or at a certain efficiency. Pareto solution fronts for various projectile masses are found using the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) under the integration environment of iSIGHTTM software. Numerical results show that the NSGA-II can provide a set of feasible Pareto solutions for the two-objective optimization design model of PPS, among which the "best" one is to be extracted according to the designer's requirements.