A Compact High-Voltage, Nanosecond Pulse Generator for Triggering Applications

A low cost, high-voltage, nanosecond pulse trigger generator has been designed and constructed to trigger a high-power, high-action integral crowbar spark gap plasma closing switch. This switch is one of the most important components of a 200kA, 10/350μs impulse current generator, which is currently...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2018 IEEE International Conference on High Voltage Engineering and Application (ICHVE) pp. 1 - 4
Main Authors Pouraimis, P. G., Platis, A. P., Koutsoubis, J. M., Manasis, Ch. X.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.09.2018
Subjects
Capacitors
Generators
Optical buffering
Optical pulses
Optical switches
Spirals
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Summary:A low cost, high-voltage, nanosecond pulse trigger generator has been designed and constructed to trigger a high-power, high-action integral crowbar spark gap plasma closing switch. This switch is one of the most important components of a 200kA, 10/350μs impulse current generator, which is currently under development for testing lightning protection components. The trigger generator is can produce 80kV voltage pulses at its output, with a rise time and duration of 35ns and 100ns (Full Width at Half Magnitude - FWHM) respectively. It utilizes a spiral strip-line (vector inversion) pulse forming network (PFN) insulated with air, which is fired by a compact trigatron switch. Apart from its compactness, the device is fully controlled from single shot up to a pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 10Hz by a digital pulse timing generator through a fiber optic link. In addition to design and construction information of the trigger generator, this work provides experimental results regarding the output pulse magnitude, duration and voltage multiplication efficiency of the spiral strip-line PFN.
ISSN:2474-3852
DOI:10.1109/ICHVE.2018.8642208