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Spark channel dynamics in railgun switches in unipolar and oscillatory discharges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2019

A.V. Kharlov Open the ORCID record for A.V. Kharlov [Opens in a new window]
A.V. Kharlov*
Affiliation:
Institute of High Current Electronics, Tomsk, Russia
*
Author for correspondence: A.V. Kharlov, Institute of High Current Electronics, 2/3 Academichesky Ave., 634055 Tomsk, Russia, E-mail: akharlov@lef.hcei.tsc.ru
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Abstract

Spark gaps are often used to commute energy in the discharge of a capacitive storage to a load. In some applications, a unipolar pulse is not feasible, and an oscillatory (underdamped sinusoidal) regime must be realized for the discharge of the capacitor bank. Spark gaps, which were developed for unipolar discharge, cannot be directly employed in an under-damped (oscillatory) regime since at the transition of the current through zero, the spark channel could stop motion and ignite in the following half period. This work has two main objectives: (i) To develop and test a simulation model of spark channel motion in linear rail geometry, which must be valid for both the oscillatory and unipolar regimes of capacitor bank discharge; and (ii) to investigate arc motion and electrode heating, depending on the current and charge transfer, over a wide range of operation. A self-consistent treatment of plasma motion and electrode heating (taking into account the radiation of a plasma channel) is applied in the present paper, and it is shown that radiation can significantly impact on the temperature of the electrodes. Electrode ablation and the temperature dependence of the main thermal parameters are also taken into account. Stainless steel (Cr/Ni/Ti 18/10/0.6÷0.8), copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), tungsten (W), and molybdenum (Mo) are used here as electrode materials since these materials are widely used for the manufacture of electrodes. The results of numerical calculations are compared with experimental results, and conditions are defined for reduced electrode erosion.

Keywords

Electrical dischargeelectrodes erosionplasma accelerationspark gap
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 223 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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