Results of experiment on explosion of W and Al wires in water and vacuum

The objective of the present work is to provide an experimental base for constructing the conductivity matrix of tungsten under conditions similar to exploding wire of multi-wire arrays on terawatt systems. This paper reports the results of experiments on nano- and microsecond electric explosions of aluminum and tungsten wires. The generator makes it possible to vary the impedance, the charge voltage, the current rise time, and to explode wires both in water and vacuum. The capacitance of the current generator is 5 µF or 67 nF. The inductance of the current generator is 28 µH, 2.25 µH, or 0.73 µH. This provides the possibility of varying the rise rate of the wire current in the range from 6·10¹¹ to 5·10¹⁶ A/(s·cm²).