Thomas Hotz - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Thomas Hotz
The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2010
Therapeutische Umschau. Revue thérapeutique, 2003
Minimally invasive osteosynthesis techniques are very suitable for treatment of unstable fracture... more Minimally invasive osteosynthesis techniques are very suitable for treatment of unstable fractures in children. Because of little additional soft tissue trauma, these techniques are also called biological osteosynthesis. They allow fracture treatment in children and adolescents without any harm to the growth plate. Angular deformities can be corrected due to further growth. Kirschner wires, threaded or unthreaded, elastic intramedullary rods or external fixators are most commonly used for osteosynthesis. After successful closed reduction of the fragments under x-ray amplifier control, the implants are inserted with minimal trauma to the soft tissues. This results in safe and rapid healing, spontaneous correction of slight malunions and fast restoration of function. The main disadvantage of these methods is a greater exposure of the patient and in particular the surgical team to x-ray radiation. These techniques result in shorter hospital stays enabling a fast return to a familiar en...
The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2010
Penile constriction rings are either used for autoerotic stimulus or to increase sexual performan... more Penile constriction rings are either used for autoerotic stimulus or to increase sexual performance. Potentially, they can become irremovable and cause urologic emergencies. Aim. We describe the successful removal of a 3.6-cm long piece of heavy metal tubing used as a penile constriction ring.
2012 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT), 2012
Abstract Series faults are self-sustained arcs produced in series with the normal path of supply ... more Abstract Series faults are self-sustained arcs produced in series with the normal path of supply power. The electromagnetic transients produced by these series faults are of interest during the design and analysis of existing and forthcoming dc microgrids. This paper ...
The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 1999
Background: The surgical treatment of complex unstable proximal femur fractures from the trochant... more Background: The surgical treatment of complex unstable proximal femur fractures from the trochanteric region to the middle shaft area is difficult and often highly invasive, especially in older patients with osteoporotic bones.
The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 2011
Fractures of the lateral clavicle result in a high rate of nonunion compared with midshaft fractu... more Fractures of the lateral clavicle result in a high rate of nonunion compared with midshaft fractures. Many operative treatment methods of unstable lateral clavicle fractures have been described, but no single method has become generally accepted. This study reports our experience treating unstable lateral clavicle fractures with coracoclavicular ligament rupture. Within 7 years, 19 patients with acute unstable lateral clavicle fractures were treated using a 2.4-mm T-plate and a coracoclavicular polydioxanone cord. The follow-up averaged 5.3 years (range, 2.0-8.8). Shoulder function was assessed using the Constant score and Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand score. General health of the patients was evaluated according to the Short Form 36 questionnaire. Eighteen of the 19 patients treated with our method achieved union at 8.8 weeks (range, 6-14), a Constant Murley score of 91.5 (range, 72-100) on the injured side versus 93.5 (range, 80-100) on the contralateral side, a Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand score of 1.4 (range, 0-9.2), and a Short Form 36 Health Score of 85 (range, 89-100). One patient showed breakage of the plate and a delayed union at the radiologic follow-up 4 months after surgery. This study shows that treatment of unstable lateral clavicular fractures with an angular stable locking plate together with a polydioxanone cord ligament augmentation leads to excellent results with a 95% union rate. Additional coracoclavicular augmentation next to plate fixation of the clavicle may partially solve the problem of uncertain plate fixation if the lateral fragment is small and multifragmented, as often observed.
IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 2000
This paper presents a dc arc model to simplify the study of a critical issue in dc microgrids: se... more This paper presents a dc arc model to simplify the study of a critical issue in dc microgrids: series faults. The model is derived from a hyperbolic approximation of observed arc voltage and current patterns, which permit analyzing the arc in terms of its resistance, power, energy, and quenching condition. Recent faults staged by the authors on a dc microgrid yielded enough data to develop an arc model for three fault types: constant-gap speed, fixed-gap distance, and accelerated gap. The results in this paper compare experimental and simulation results for the three fault types. It is concluded that because the instantaneous voltage, current, power, and energy waveforms produced by the model agree well with experimental results, the model is suitable for transient simulations.
IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2000
The development of high-power density electrical machines continues to accelerate, driven by mili... more The development of high-power density electrical machines continues to accelerate, driven by military, transportation, and industrial needs to achieve more power in a smaller package. Higher speed electrical machines are a recognized path toward achieving higher power densities. Existing industry testing standards describe well-defined procedures for characterizing both synchronous and induction machines. However, these procedures are applicable primarily to fixed-frequency (usually 60 or 50 Hz) power supplies. As machine speeds increase well beyond the 3600-rpm limitation of 60-Hz machines, a need for performance testing at higher frequencies is emerging. An inverter power supply was used to conduct a complete series of tests on two induction motors (0.5 and 1.0 MW) with speeds up to ~5000 rpm. The use of a nonsinusoidal power supply with limited power output capability required the development of measurement techniques and testing strategies quite different than those typically used for 60/50 Hz testing. Instrumentation and techniques for measuring voltage, current, and power on harmonic rich waveforms with accuracies approaching 1% are described. Locked-rotor and breakdown torque tests typically require large kVA input to the motor, much higher than the rated load requirement. An inverter sized for the rated load requirements of the motor was adapted to perform locked-rotor and breakdown torque tests. Inverter drive protection features, such as anti-hunting and current limit that were built into the inverter had to be factored into the test planning and implementation. Test results are presented in two companion papers. This paper (Part 1) correlates test results with the results of an algorithmic induction motor analysis program. Part 2 presents the test results compared with a Matlab simulation program and also provides a comprehensive discussion of the instrumentation that was essential to achieve testing accuracy. Correlating test results with calculated valu- es confirmed that the testing techniques developed during this testing program are useful for evaluating high-speed, high-power density electrical machinery
Digestive Surgery, 2003
Nonparasitic splenic cysts are rare. Therefore, there is no 'evidence-bas... more Nonparasitic splenic cysts are rare. Therefore, there is no 'evidence-based' information regarding their optimal surgical management. In the last years the laparoscopic approach has gained increasing acceptance in splenic surgery. The aim of this study is to present our experience with the laparoscopic management of splenic cysts. The medical records of 7 patients with splenic cysts were reviewed retrospectively. One patient had an open partial splenic resection. Five patients, 3 of them with a posttraumatic and 2 with an epidermoid splenic cyst, underwent laparoscopic unroofing of the cyst. In 4 of these cases the postoperative course was uneventful, whereas in 1 case the patient developed a cyst relapse soon postoperatively. Later on this patient successfully underwent an open partial splenic resection. The 7th patient had an explorative laparoscopy. The cyst was located intrasplenically, entirely covered with unaffected splenic parenchyma, and reached the splenic hilus. Therefore, a conversion to open partial splenectomy was performed. Open partial splenectomy and laparoscopic cyst wall unroofing are both effective tools in the management of splenic nonparasitic cysts. Surgeons must master both techniques as nowadays spleen-preserving techniques should be attempted in every case of splenic nonparasitic cyst.
J Roy Stat Soc Ser C Appl, 2010
We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two ex... more We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two examples studying the growth of leaves, and the temporal evolution of tree rings. In the latter case measurements were taken at fixed angles while in the former case the angles were free. Subsequently, this leads to different shape spaces, related to different concepts of size, for the analysis. While several shape spaces already existed in the literature when the angles are fixed, a new shape space for free angles, called spherical shape space, needed to be introduced. We compare these different shape spaces both regarding their mathematical properties, and in their adequacy to the data at hand; we then apply suitably defined principal component analysis on these. In both examples we find the shapes to evolve mainly along the first principal component during growth; this is the "geodesic hypothesis" formulated by Le, H. and Kume, A. (Detection of Shape Changes in Biological Features, Journal of Microscopy, 2000 (200), 140-147). Moreover, we were able to link change points of this evolution to significant changes in environmental conditions.
Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Apr 1, 2009
In this paper a numerical method to compute principal component geodesics for Kendall's planar sh... more In this paper a numerical method to compute principal component geodesics for Kendall's planar shape spaces -which are essentially complex projective spaces -is presented. Underlying is the notion of principal component analysis based on geodesics for non-Euclidean manifolds as proposed in an earlier paper by Huckemann and Ziezold [S. Huckemann, H. Ziezold, Principal component analysis for Riemannian manifolds with an application to triangular shape spaces, Adv. Appl. Prob. (SGSA) 38 ]. Currently, principal component analysis for shape spaces is done on the basis of a Euclidean approximation. In this paper, using well-studied datasets and numerical simulations, these approximation errors are discussed. Overall, the error distribution is rather dispersed. The numerical findings back the notion that the Euclidean approximation is good for highly concentrated data. For low concentration, however, the error can be strongly notable. This is in particular the case for a small number of landmarks. For highly concentrated data, stronger anisotropicity and a larger number of landmarks may also increase the error.
We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two ex... more We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two examples studying the growth of leaves, and the temporal evolution of tree rings. In the latter case measurements were taken at fixed angles while in the former case the angles were free. Subsequently, this leads to different shape spaces, related to different concepts of size, for the analysis. While several shape spaces already existed in the literature when the angles are fixed, a new shape space for free angles, called spherical shape space, needed to be introduced. We compare these different shape spaces both regarding their mathematical properties, and in their adequacy to the data at hand; we then apply suitably defined principal component analysis on these. In both examples we find the shapes to evolve mainly along the first principal component during growth; this is the "geodesic hypothesis" formulated by Le, H. and Kume, A. (Detection of Shape Changes in Biological Features, Journal of Microscopy, 2000 (200), 140-147). Moreover, we were able to link change points of this evolution to significant changes in environmental conditions.
Eprint Arxiv 1108 2141, Aug 10, 2011
This paper gives a comprehensive treatment of local uniqueness, asymptotics and numerics for intr... more This paper gives a comprehensive treatment of local uniqueness, asymptotics and numerics for intrinsic means on the circle. It turns out that local uniqueness as well as rates of convergence are governed by the distribution near the antipode. In a nutshell, if the distribution there is locally less than uniform, we have local uniqueness and asymptotic normality with a rate of 1 / \surdn. With increased proximity to the uniform distribution the rate can be arbitrarly slow, and in the limit, local uniqueness is lost. Further, we give general distributional conditions, e.g. unimodality, that ensure global uniqueness. Along the way, we discover that sample means can occur only at the vertices of a regular polygon which allows to compute intrinsic sample means in linear time from sorted data. This algorithm is finally applied in a simulation study demonstrating the dependence of the convergence rates on the behavior of the density at the antipode.
Corr, Aug 6, 2010
We study the effect of growth on the fingerprints of adolescents, based on which we suggest a sim... more We study the effect of growth on the fingerprints of adolescents, based on which we suggest a simple method to adjust for growth when trying to recover a juvenile's fingerprint in a database years later. Based on longitudinal data sets in juveniles' criminal records, we show that growth essentially leads to an isotropic rescaling, so that we can use the strong correlation between growth in stature and limbs to model the growth of fingerprints proportional to stature growth as documented in growth charts. The proposed rescaling leads to a 72% reduction of the distances between corresponding minutiae for the data set analyzed. These findings were corroborated by several verification tests. In an identification test on a database containing 3.25 million right index fingers at the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany, the identification error rate of 20.8% was reduced to 2.1% by rescaling. The presented method is of striking simplicity and can easily be integrated into existing automated fingerprint identification systems.
24th Plasma Dynamics, and Lasers Conference, 1993
Experiments were carried out to measure the pressure at the insulating sidewall of railguns opera... more Experiments were carried out to measure the pressure at the insulating sidewall of railguns operated with solid armatures, due to the plasma source at the contacts. The railgun structure and the experimental details are described, and the test results are presented. It is emphasized that the load applied to the railgun by transitioned metal armature is an important parameter in the design of the railgun structure. The results of measurements of the amplitude and duration of these loads show that, in general, the pressure that the sidewall experiences is only a fraction of the pressure developed in a full plasma armature and is dependent on the transition voltage and the method of armature obturation.
The authors wish to thank the discussants for their very interesting and stimulating contribution... more The authors wish to thank the discussants for their very interesting and stimulating contributions indicating various directions for future research and clarifying issues raised in our contribution. It seems that the following three major topics
The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2010
Therapeutische Umschau. Revue thérapeutique, 2003
Minimally invasive osteosynthesis techniques are very suitable for treatment of unstable fracture... more Minimally invasive osteosynthesis techniques are very suitable for treatment of unstable fractures in children. Because of little additional soft tissue trauma, these techniques are also called biological osteosynthesis. They allow fracture treatment in children and adolescents without any harm to the growth plate. Angular deformities can be corrected due to further growth. Kirschner wires, threaded or unthreaded, elastic intramedullary rods or external fixators are most commonly used for osteosynthesis. After successful closed reduction of the fragments under x-ray amplifier control, the implants are inserted with minimal trauma to the soft tissues. This results in safe and rapid healing, spontaneous correction of slight malunions and fast restoration of function. The main disadvantage of these methods is a greater exposure of the patient and in particular the surgical team to x-ray radiation. These techniques result in shorter hospital stays enabling a fast return to a familiar en...
The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2010
Penile constriction rings are either used for autoerotic stimulus or to increase sexual performan... more Penile constriction rings are either used for autoerotic stimulus or to increase sexual performance. Potentially, they can become irremovable and cause urologic emergencies. Aim. We describe the successful removal of a 3.6-cm long piece of heavy metal tubing used as a penile constriction ring.
2012 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT), 2012
Abstract Series faults are self-sustained arcs produced in series with the normal path of supply ... more Abstract Series faults are self-sustained arcs produced in series with the normal path of supply power. The electromagnetic transients produced by these series faults are of interest during the design and analysis of existing and forthcoming dc microgrids. This paper ...
The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 1999
Background: The surgical treatment of complex unstable proximal femur fractures from the trochant... more Background: The surgical treatment of complex unstable proximal femur fractures from the trochanteric region to the middle shaft area is difficult and often highly invasive, especially in older patients with osteoporotic bones.
The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 2011
Fractures of the lateral clavicle result in a high rate of nonunion compared with midshaft fractu... more Fractures of the lateral clavicle result in a high rate of nonunion compared with midshaft fractures. Many operative treatment methods of unstable lateral clavicle fractures have been described, but no single method has become generally accepted. This study reports our experience treating unstable lateral clavicle fractures with coracoclavicular ligament rupture. Within 7 years, 19 patients with acute unstable lateral clavicle fractures were treated using a 2.4-mm T-plate and a coracoclavicular polydioxanone cord. The follow-up averaged 5.3 years (range, 2.0-8.8). Shoulder function was assessed using the Constant score and Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand score. General health of the patients was evaluated according to the Short Form 36 questionnaire. Eighteen of the 19 patients treated with our method achieved union at 8.8 weeks (range, 6-14), a Constant Murley score of 91.5 (range, 72-100) on the injured side versus 93.5 (range, 80-100) on the contralateral side, a Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand score of 1.4 (range, 0-9.2), and a Short Form 36 Health Score of 85 (range, 89-100). One patient showed breakage of the plate and a delayed union at the radiologic follow-up 4 months after surgery. This study shows that treatment of unstable lateral clavicular fractures with an angular stable locking plate together with a polydioxanone cord ligament augmentation leads to excellent results with a 95% union rate. Additional coracoclavicular augmentation next to plate fixation of the clavicle may partially solve the problem of uncertain plate fixation if the lateral fragment is small and multifragmented, as often observed.
IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 2000
This paper presents a dc arc model to simplify the study of a critical issue in dc microgrids: se... more This paper presents a dc arc model to simplify the study of a critical issue in dc microgrids: series faults. The model is derived from a hyperbolic approximation of observed arc voltage and current patterns, which permit analyzing the arc in terms of its resistance, power, energy, and quenching condition. Recent faults staged by the authors on a dc microgrid yielded enough data to develop an arc model for three fault types: constant-gap speed, fixed-gap distance, and accelerated gap. The results in this paper compare experimental and simulation results for the three fault types. It is concluded that because the instantaneous voltage, current, power, and energy waveforms produced by the model agree well with experimental results, the model is suitable for transient simulations.
IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2000
The development of high-power density electrical machines continues to accelerate, driven by mili... more The development of high-power density electrical machines continues to accelerate, driven by military, transportation, and industrial needs to achieve more power in a smaller package. Higher speed electrical machines are a recognized path toward achieving higher power densities. Existing industry testing standards describe well-defined procedures for characterizing both synchronous and induction machines. However, these procedures are applicable primarily to fixed-frequency (usually 60 or 50 Hz) power supplies. As machine speeds increase well beyond the 3600-rpm limitation of 60-Hz machines, a need for performance testing at higher frequencies is emerging. An inverter power supply was used to conduct a complete series of tests on two induction motors (0.5 and 1.0 MW) with speeds up to ~5000 rpm. The use of a nonsinusoidal power supply with limited power output capability required the development of measurement techniques and testing strategies quite different than those typically used for 60/50 Hz testing. Instrumentation and techniques for measuring voltage, current, and power on harmonic rich waveforms with accuracies approaching 1% are described. Locked-rotor and breakdown torque tests typically require large kVA input to the motor, much higher than the rated load requirement. An inverter sized for the rated load requirements of the motor was adapted to perform locked-rotor and breakdown torque tests. Inverter drive protection features, such as anti-hunting and current limit that were built into the inverter had to be factored into the test planning and implementation. Test results are presented in two companion papers. This paper (Part 1) correlates test results with the results of an algorithmic induction motor analysis program. Part 2 presents the test results compared with a Matlab simulation program and also provides a comprehensive discussion of the instrumentation that was essential to achieve testing accuracy. Correlating test results with calculated valu- es confirmed that the testing techniques developed during this testing program are useful for evaluating high-speed, high-power density electrical machinery
Digestive Surgery, 2003
Nonparasitic splenic cysts are rare. Therefore, there is no 'evidence-bas... more Nonparasitic splenic cysts are rare. Therefore, there is no 'evidence-based' information regarding their optimal surgical management. In the last years the laparoscopic approach has gained increasing acceptance in splenic surgery. The aim of this study is to present our experience with the laparoscopic management of splenic cysts. The medical records of 7 patients with splenic cysts were reviewed retrospectively. One patient had an open partial splenic resection. Five patients, 3 of them with a posttraumatic and 2 with an epidermoid splenic cyst, underwent laparoscopic unroofing of the cyst. In 4 of these cases the postoperative course was uneventful, whereas in 1 case the patient developed a cyst relapse soon postoperatively. Later on this patient successfully underwent an open partial splenic resection. The 7th patient had an explorative laparoscopy. The cyst was located intrasplenically, entirely covered with unaffected splenic parenchyma, and reached the splenic hilus. Therefore, a conversion to open partial splenectomy was performed. Open partial splenectomy and laparoscopic cyst wall unroofing are both effective tools in the management of splenic nonparasitic cysts. Surgeons must master both techniques as nowadays spleen-preserving techniques should be attempted in every case of splenic nonparasitic cyst.
J Roy Stat Soc Ser C Appl, 2010
We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two ex... more We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two examples studying the growth of leaves, and the temporal evolution of tree rings. In the latter case measurements were taken at fixed angles while in the former case the angles were free. Subsequently, this leads to different shape spaces, related to different concepts of size, for the analysis. While several shape spaces already existed in the literature when the angles are fixed, a new shape space for free angles, called spherical shape space, needed to be introduced. We compare these different shape spaces both regarding their mathematical properties, and in their adequacy to the data at hand; we then apply suitably defined principal component analysis on these. In both examples we find the shapes to evolve mainly along the first principal component during growth; this is the "geodesic hypothesis" formulated by Le, H. and Kume, A. (Detection of Shape Changes in Biological Features, Journal of Microscopy, 2000 (200), 140-147). Moreover, we were able to link change points of this evolution to significant changes in environmental conditions.
Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Apr 1, 2009
In this paper a numerical method to compute principal component geodesics for Kendall's planar sh... more In this paper a numerical method to compute principal component geodesics for Kendall's planar shape spaces -which are essentially complex projective spaces -is presented. Underlying is the notion of principal component analysis based on geodesics for non-Euclidean manifolds as proposed in an earlier paper by Huckemann and Ziezold [S. Huckemann, H. Ziezold, Principal component analysis for Riemannian manifolds with an application to triangular shape spaces, Adv. Appl. Prob. (SGSA) 38 ]. Currently, principal component analysis for shape spaces is done on the basis of a Euclidean approximation. In this paper, using well-studied datasets and numerical simulations, these approximation errors are discussed. Overall, the error distribution is rather dispersed. The numerical findings back the notion that the Euclidean approximation is good for highly concentrated data. For low concentration, however, the error can be strongly notable. This is in particular the case for a small number of landmarks. For highly concentrated data, stronger anisotropicity and a larger number of landmarks may also increase the error.
We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two ex... more We analyse the shapes of star-shaped objects which are pre-aligned. This is motivated from two examples studying the growth of leaves, and the temporal evolution of tree rings. In the latter case measurements were taken at fixed angles while in the former case the angles were free. Subsequently, this leads to different shape spaces, related to different concepts of size, for the analysis. While several shape spaces already existed in the literature when the angles are fixed, a new shape space for free angles, called spherical shape space, needed to be introduced. We compare these different shape spaces both regarding their mathematical properties, and in their adequacy to the data at hand; we then apply suitably defined principal component analysis on these. In both examples we find the shapes to evolve mainly along the first principal component during growth; this is the "geodesic hypothesis" formulated by Le, H. and Kume, A. (Detection of Shape Changes in Biological Features, Journal of Microscopy, 2000 (200), 140-147). Moreover, we were able to link change points of this evolution to significant changes in environmental conditions.
Eprint Arxiv 1108 2141, Aug 10, 2011
This paper gives a comprehensive treatment of local uniqueness, asymptotics and numerics for intr... more This paper gives a comprehensive treatment of local uniqueness, asymptotics and numerics for intrinsic means on the circle. It turns out that local uniqueness as well as rates of convergence are governed by the distribution near the antipode. In a nutshell, if the distribution there is locally less than uniform, we have local uniqueness and asymptotic normality with a rate of 1 / \surdn. With increased proximity to the uniform distribution the rate can be arbitrarly slow, and in the limit, local uniqueness is lost. Further, we give general distributional conditions, e.g. unimodality, that ensure global uniqueness. Along the way, we discover that sample means can occur only at the vertices of a regular polygon which allows to compute intrinsic sample means in linear time from sorted data. This algorithm is finally applied in a simulation study demonstrating the dependence of the convergence rates on the behavior of the density at the antipode.
Corr, Aug 6, 2010
We study the effect of growth on the fingerprints of adolescents, based on which we suggest a sim... more We study the effect of growth on the fingerprints of adolescents, based on which we suggest a simple method to adjust for growth when trying to recover a juvenile's fingerprint in a database years later. Based on longitudinal data sets in juveniles' criminal records, we show that growth essentially leads to an isotropic rescaling, so that we can use the strong correlation between growth in stature and limbs to model the growth of fingerprints proportional to stature growth as documented in growth charts. The proposed rescaling leads to a 72% reduction of the distances between corresponding minutiae for the data set analyzed. These findings were corroborated by several verification tests. In an identification test on a database containing 3.25 million right index fingers at the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany, the identification error rate of 20.8% was reduced to 2.1% by rescaling. The presented method is of striking simplicity and can easily be integrated into existing automated fingerprint identification systems.
24th Plasma Dynamics, and Lasers Conference, 1993
Experiments were carried out to measure the pressure at the insulating sidewall of railguns opera... more Experiments were carried out to measure the pressure at the insulating sidewall of railguns operated with solid armatures, due to the plasma source at the contacts. The railgun structure and the experimental details are described, and the test results are presented. It is emphasized that the load applied to the railgun by transitioned metal armature is an important parameter in the design of the railgun structure. The results of measurements of the amplitude and duration of these loads show that, in general, the pressure that the sidewall experiences is only a fraction of the pressure developed in a full plasma armature and is dependent on the transition voltage and the method of armature obturation.
The authors wish to thank the discussants for their very interesting and stimulating contribution... more The authors wish to thank the discussants for their very interesting and stimulating contributions indicating various directions for future research and clarifying issues raised in our contribution. It seems that the following three major topics