A test facility for evaluating high energy discharge switches

EEV has undertaken a development programme to evaluate a new type of gas discharge switch. A fundamental part of any such development exercise is to have the ability to test thoroughly device concepts, and this has required the design and construction of the purpose-built test facility which is described. The starting point in the development of the test facility. A capacitor bank consisting of 32 capacitors, each of 195 μF rated at 8 kV was arranged with pulse shaping inductors and resistor networks. The initial design had several problems which are discussed. Improvements to the test facility to overcome the problems are outlined