Study of high energy storage Blumlein transmission lines as high power microwave drivers

Summary form only given. The evolution of high power microwave (HIPM) sources as practical systems requires the development of compact, portable, reusable, pulsed power systems. One approach to pursuing this objective is to utilize parallel-stacked Blumlein transmission lines energized using a compact Marx generator. Such a configuration would be capable of driving low impedance HPM sources with a long pulse waveform. One of the limitations of this approach is field enhancement-induced breakdown at the edges of the line. This presentation will describe a research program that will both computationally and experimentally study electrical breakdown in such transmission line configurations for a variety of dielectric materials and substrate geometries. Calculations are being performed using the commercial code HFSSTM (Agilent/Ansoft). Results to-date of this research, and its overall relation to intense beam-driven HPM source development will be discussed.