Electrostatic modeling of vacuum insulator triple junctions

Author

Tully, L.K. ; White, A.D. ; Goerz, D.A. ; Javedani, J.B. ; Houck, T.L.

Author_Institution

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, CA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2007

fDate

17-22 June 2007

Firstpage

1195

Lastpage

1200

Abstract

Triple junctions are often initiation points for insulator flashover in pulsed power devices. Two-dimensional finite-element TriComp and Maxwell modeling software suites were utilized for their electrostatic field modeling packages to investigate electric field behavior in the anode and cathode triple junctions of a high voltage vacuum-insulator interface [1,2]. Both codes enable extraction of values from a macroscopic solution for use as boundary conditions in a subset solution. Electric fields computed with this zoom capability correlate with theoretical analysis of the anode and cathode triple junctions within submicron distances for nominal electrode spacing of 1.0 cm. This paper will discuss the iterative zoom process with TriComp and Maxwell finite-element electric field solvers and review theoretical verification of the results.

Keywords

Anodes; Boundary conditions; Cathodes; Electrostatics; Finite element methods; Flashover; Insulation; Packaging; Software packages; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Pulsed Power Conference, 2007 16th IEEE International

Conference_Location

Albuquerque, NM

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-0913-6

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-0914-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PPPS.2007.4652401

Filename

4652401