A compact submicrosecond, high current generator

Abstract

Pulsed current generator was developed for experiments with current carrying pulsed plasma. Main parts of the generator are capacitor bank, low inductive current driving lines, and central load part. Generator consists of four identical sections, connected in parallel to one load. Capacitor bank is assembled from 24 capacitor blocks (100 kV, 80 nF), connected in parallel. It stores 9.6 kJ at 100 kV charging voltage. Each capacitor block incorporates a multigap spark switch, which is able to commute by six parallel channels. Switches operate in dry air at atmospheric pressure. The generator was tested with an inductive load and a liner load. At 17.5 nH inductive load and 100 kV of charging voltage it provides 650 kA of current amplitude with 390 ns rise time with 0.6 ohms damping resistors in discharge circuit of each capacitor block. The net generator inductance without a load was optimized to be as low as 15 nH, which results in extremely low impedance of the generator (approximately 0.08 ohms). It ensures effective energy coupling with a low impedance load such as Z pinch. The generator operates reliably without any adjustments in 70-100 kV range of charging voltage. Jitter in delay between output pulse and triggering pulse is less than 5 ns at 70-100 kV charging voltage. Operation and handling are very simple, because no oil or purified gases are required for the generator. The generator has dimensions 5.24x1.2x0.18 m(3) and total weight about 1400 kg, thus manifesting itself as simple, robust, and cost effective apparatus.

Electron-beam accelerator for pumping of a Xe2 lamp

“…At arrival of a triggering pulse with polarity, opposite to the main pulse, homogeneous voltage distribution is distorted and gaps break down sequentially. Detailed description of the capacitor block and its tests are given in (Zherlitsyn et al 2009;Kovalchuk et al 2009b).…”

Pulse generators based on air-insulated linear-transformer-driver stages

“…At arrival of the triggering pulse with polarity, opposite to the main pulse, homogeneous voltage distribution is distorted and the switch gaps breaks down sequentially. The capacitor block has been previously investigated and tested [10,11]. A twodimensional simulation of real switch geometry with a back current grounded electrode has been performed for 100 kV charging voltage.…”

“…The simulation model is described in detail in [10]. Figure 6(a) shows an equivalent electrical scheme of a discharge circuit for the two LTD-20 stages assembly (any number of stages can be simulated).…”

100 GW linear transformer driver cavity: Design, simulations, and performance

“…The prime power source of such a machine may consist of a system of linear transformer drivers (LTDs) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] fast Marx generators (FMGs) [7,9,[19][20][21][22] or impedance-matched Marx generators (IMGs) [18,23,24]. The pulsed power community has been developing LTD technology for 20 years on various single-cavity experiments [16,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], multicavity (single "module") experiments [14,27,32,35,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44] and a few multimodule experiments [11,14]. The work presented here describes the design and performance of the first two meter...…”