Explosive pulsed power experiments at the Phillips Laboratory

The application of pulsed power technology to advanced aerospace mission scenarios increasingly involves achieving higher peak power and energy while shrinking the deployment package. The inherent high energy density of explosives make them an obvious candidate for applications requiring extremely compact, single shot pulsed power drivers. However, explosive flux compression generators tend to be rather slow, low impedance, high current devices, while the loads of interest typically present a relatively high impedance and require short, high voltage pulses. In this paper, the results of experiments involving helical explosive generators and pulse shaping/impedance matching systems are discussed.