Thin film geometry influence on fusing wave shape

The Energy Systems Institute (ESI) of the University at Buffalo in a joint effort with the U.S. ARMY ARDEC Advanced Energy Armament Systems Center (AEASC), is working on fundamental research that will, for the first time, assist in providing highly reliable mobility systems, and systems of systems that are fault tolerant. More specifically, the key objective in this endeavor is to create a geometrically controlled, low energy, electrical surface flashover intense plasma utilizing commercial capacitor grade, polypropylene film (7 μm thick with aluminum metallization). The polypropylene film was shaped into two configurations for this experiment with configuration one having the dimensions of 30.5 cm×1.9 cm, length by width, respectively, and configuration two having the same dimensions as the first configuration with the exception that the conductive path was altered by the removal of some of the aluminum metallization approximately 0.8 cm from the edges towards the center of the film to create a conductive "bottlenecked" path whose width ranged between 1-3 mm. Voltage was then applied to the samples via the discharge of a 2 μF capacitor charged to 2500 V_dc. For a sample of configuration one, the peak current observed through the sample was in excess of 10 A. When comparing configuration one results with configuration two results, the removal of the metallization helped to lower the peak current experienced during the flashover event by approximately one third. This paper discusses the noted change of energy due to this physical alteration of the metallization, the future work that will be focused on optimizing the geometries to yield lower peak currents and a more efficient distribution of power used in advanced energy systems. We note that this configurable geometry fusing approach is specifically designed to be a near short circuit until the fuse is energized. This significantly reduces any concern about electrostatic discharge (ESD) inadvertently causing premature flashover, hence providing a robust ESD proof fuse.