Capillary Discharge Response To Xram Inductive Generator

Characteristics of an electrothermal load derived from an inductive power conditioning system were measured and evaluated. A four-stage XRAM inductive storage and conditioning circuit was, used to amplify a fourfold current up to 8.5kA at a power of 14MW. A nonlinear electrothermal load, in the form of a discharge capil lary, was tested. The current decayed to zero during 3ms while maintaining a low voltage variation due to the nonlinear characteristic of the load. The calculated voltage values from the capillary model were approxi mately 30% lower than those of the experimental one. As a reference measurement, the circuit was also tested with 0.1spl Omega/ resistive load. A 2.54kA charging current was amplified to a 10kA peak current at the load. The 25kJ stored energy was transferred to the load yielding 84% efficiency. Circuit losses were mainly due to the winding resistance of the inductor. Programing the switching ac tion, the current rise-time could be shaped in the range of 100-2000/spl mu/s.