The performance of hydrogen insulated, triggered 3-electrode spark gaps after long-term storage in argon, hydrogen and nitrogen has been investigated. 15 spark gaps were characterised and for each of the 3 different gases, 5 of those sparkgaps were stored for periods between 1 & 5 months. Those spark gaps with a storage period of 1 & 2 months were subjected to repeat tests. Before each testing...
This paper describes an investigation into the performance of sparkgaps with hydrogen-nitrogen, argon-hydrogen mixtures and a hydrogen only gas fill. The spark gap was operated in both self-breaking and triggered modes of operation to quantify the voltage hold-off and trigger voltage requirements as a function of gas mixture and gas recovery time. An un-triggered spark gap was operated and the...
This paper describes the results of a study into the performance of a triggered three electrode, uv illuminated spark gap. A test cell containing the 3-electrode triggered spark gap and a separate two electrode spark gap (to provide the UV illumination) was developed initially. UV from the two electrode gap was produced by breaking the gap with an independent HV pulse generator, which allowed...
We demonstrate a high pressure, air-filled, spark gap switch with small gap geometries of 1.5 - 3.5 mm triggered using a laser induced plasma between the electrodes with laser energies as low as 500 uJ resulting in jitter from 350 ps to 2.2 ns when operated between 70% - 30% of self-break for voltages >100 kV. Switches of this design can be used for near-synchronous firing of 100’s to 1000’s...
The UV laser triggering of high pulse power switches has been quite extensively studied over the past decades. This tool gives generally access to a reliable triggering with low jitter. New generations of lasers allow now to work with other wavelengths available at higher energy. How these two parameters interplay in the triggering mechanism? How could they be optimized to increase the...
Linear transformer driver (LTD) is an alternative pulsed power generation scheme to traditional pulse compression methods. Solid-state LTDs are being developed for industrial applications. They have advantages in system modularity and output flexibility. In addition, they are also featured by compactness and stress distribution.
Semiconductor power devices have been used as switches for the...
Pulse power systems applied in oil well stimulation device are required to work under circumstances of high temperature while the maximum working temperature is over 120℃. In traditional trigger devices, the capacitor discharges via the trigger surface when a high power thyristor closes the circuit, releasing enormous energy but the high power semiconductor devices and the drive circuits...
Pulsed streamer discharge plasma, a type of non-thermal plasma, is known to generate various chemically active species therefore widely applied to many fields such as water quality improvement and ozone generation. However, detailed physical properties of streamer discharge remain unclear. Thus, basic research on pulsed streamer discharge is necessary.
Some studies report the streamer...
