Repetitive All Solid State Pulse Marx Type Generator with Energy Recovery Clamp Circuit for Indutive Loads

Summary form only given. In the last decade, repetitive high-voltage pulses have been used extensively in industrial applications, as for example in food sterilization and surface engineering, which increased the need of efficient, flexible and suitable power supplies, based on solid state switches. A number of techniques have been used in order to generate high-voltage pulses from generators with optimised performance and characteristics, taking the best of solid-state technology. One of these is the mature Marx generator concept that as has been intensively used through the years, with significant technological improvements to increase the performance of the original circuit. We will report on a newly developed Marx type circuit to achieve both output-voltage multiplication and energy recovery that has been developed for inductive load applications, namely electromagnetic forming, based on an all-solid state Marx type generator. The proposed circuit takes advantage of the power semiconductor hard switches intensive use, replacing the conventional Marx bank passive elements, to increase the performance, strongly reducing losses and increasing the pulse repetition frequency. Additionally, the generator is designed with an energy reset circuit that enables the use of inductive loads, recovering the inductive energy during the hard switches off state, back to the energy storage capacitors. This decreases the charging time, and enables higher frequency operation, increasing the pulse generator yield. The high voltage measurements of the generator output will be presented and compared with the results of circuit simulations.