A mobile, high-power, high-energy pulsed-power system

A high-power, high-energy pulsed-power generator, based on a 415 kJ / 22 kV capacitor bank, has recently been developed and tested indoor at Loughborough University. The generator can drive a high-impedance system, generating a total electrical power of many GW while depositing Joule energy of many tens of kJ. The arrangement is based on inductive storage technique that includes a 600 kV high voltage transformer, two closing switches and an opening switch. The high-Coulomb closing switch in the primary circuit is activated using detonators while the closing switch, mounted in the secondary circuit to condition the load output, uses a high-pressure gas self-breakdown closing switch. The opening switch in the primary circuit is an exploding wire array made from thick copper wires fired in quartz sand. Recently the entire system, including its command and control unit, was mounted into two ISO containers powered by diesel generators. The paper will describe the resulting mobile system and provide details of its performance capabilities.