Team 2212’s project is a joint project with ME team 34. The goal of this project is to expel a projectile underwater using electromagnetic fields. The Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) is interested in this because of the silence and efficiency of an electromagnetic launcher, as opposed to traditional mechanical means. To accomplish this, current is passed through a coil of wire in order to produce a strong magnetic field. This magnetic field interacts with an iron slug in the back of the projectile sled such that the sled gets pulled towards the center of the coil. If the timings of the coils are carefully controlled, a large exit velocity can be obtained. To control the project, an ESP32 microcontroller is used to provide a simple web interface to monitor the status of the device and perform the launch sequence. This allows for simple single-user control of the system.

Our team collaborated with Mechanical Engineering 34 on this project.