Measurement and Analysis of Time Delay Characteristics of Field-Breakdown Triggered Vacuum Switches

This paper focuses on the delay time and its scattering characteristics of field-breakdown triggered vacuum switch (TVS). The experimental circuit of TVS is set up, and the experiments are carried out to study the effects of several factors including the voltage across the main electrodes, the polarities of the main gap voltage, and the trigger pulse voltage on the performance of TVS. Both of triggering time delay and switching time delay are investigated. It is found that, when a positive voltage is applied to the main gap, high triggering reliability, small delay time, and jitter time of TVS can be obtained. There is a range of positive main gap voltage within which the triggering delay time is almost kept a very small constant value. Too low or too high voltage across the main gap is not desirable for successful triggering. Experimental results show that both the triggering and switching time delay and their scattering decrease as the trigger energy increases.