Recovery properties of vacuum spark gaps

Author

Sampayan, Stephen E. ; Gurbaxani, Shyam H. ; Buttram, Malcolm T.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., New Mexico Univ., Albuquerque, NM, USA

Volume

17

Issue

6

fYear

1989

fDate

12/1/1989 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

889

Lastpage

897

Abstract

The authors investigated the recovery properties of a 90-kV, 15-kA multiple site, triggered vacuum spark gap. Triggering was accomplished with a multisite surface flashover plasma source with approximately 60 sites distributed over a 10 cm² area. Gap dimensions were 1-cm spacing by 7.5-cm diameter. Recovery measurements were performed utilizing an inductively recharged double pulse circuit. Under a sinusoidal recharge, the time to a 40-kV recovery occurred in 330 μs for an average current fall rate approaching 10¹⁰ A/s. These vacuum spark gap switches may provide an alternative method of high-average-power switching

Keywords

plasma switches; spark gaps; 1 cm; 15 kA; 330 mus; 40 kV; 7.5 cm; 90 kV; high-average-power switching; inductively recharged double pulse circuit; multisite surface flashover plasma source; recovery properties; sinusoidal recharge; triggering; vacuum spark gap switches; vacuum spark gaps; Flashover; Fuses; Laboratories; Magnetic switching; Plasma sources; Pulse compression methods; Pulse power systems; Spark gaps; Switches; Vacuum technology;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/27.41229

Filename

41229