Optical and electrical diagnostics of 100 micron diameter wires exploded in air

Summary form only given. Current induced wire explosions have been studied for many years for applications in exploding bridge wires and as radiation sources. Typical media are air, water and vacuum. In this effort, experiments are conducted in ambient air for the purpose of validating numerical simulations performed with the magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) code ALEGRA. In addition to the electrical quantities current, voltage, and the action integral, derivative parameters, such as pressure and shock wave velocity, are also measured and compared.