A modular 300-kJ capacitive pulsed power supply system for the Swedish ETC programme

Under contract of the Swedish FMV Defence Material Administration a research and development programme on electrothermal-chemical launchers was started in 1995. Two containerized 300-kJ capacitive pulsed power supply (PPS) systems providing a large flexibility by their modular setup were designed and fabricated at the German TZN R&D Center. After describing the general technical requirements realized within each PPS system the paper gives some results obtained from the performance simulations conducted to define the operating parameters for the different discharge conditions of the system. Based on the results of the performance simulations the design solutions for the power conditioning circuits, the control system and the auxiliary systems are presented. Each PPS system consists of four 75-kJ capacitors with two different capacitances at full energy level. Each capacitor can be charged individually to an adjustable voltage and can be discharged via four adjustable pulse forming inductance values either sequentially or simultaneously. Both PPS systems can be connected together in order to obtain one 600-kJ discharge system