ICOPS/BEAMS 2014: 7.2 opening and closing switches electric exploding wire triggering of the megavolt gas spark gap switch

Summary form only given. For the high-power pulsed system of the capacitive energy storage, the closed switch is one of the most important devices and plays the role to transmit the energy storage and the load in the pulsed regime. The gas spark gap switch, because of its high voltage and current, is widely used in the field of the high-power pulsed system¹. A compact simple gas spark gap switch operates in self-breaking mode and the switch´s operate voltage can be up to 1 MV². However, the instability of the voltage amplitude (RMS) is higher than 7%. Development of the application of the high-power pulsed system requires the gas spark gap switch with low instability. One method is to operate in triggering mode, especially in an electric exploding wire triggering mode by use of the stability of the exploding wire´s explosion. The electric exploding wire triggering of both solid and liquid spark gap switches obtain the lower instability of the voltage amplitude^3-4. But the operation voltage is much lower than 1 MV. In this paper, the electric exploding wire triggering of 1 MV gas spark gap switch is presented. First, the principle of the electric exploding wire triggering of the gas spark gap switch is described and analyzed. Second, this kind of 1 MV gas spark gap switch is designed with geometrical structure and electrical parameters on the basis of electric circuit simulation and the finite element simulation. Finally, the electric exploding wire triggering of the gas spark gap switch is investigated experimentally. The switch can operate in 1 MV voltage with the instability (RMS) of 2%. These efforts set a good foundation for the development of the electric exploding wire triggering of 1 MV gas spark gap switch and show a promising application for the future.