The current sheath velocity in 0.25 Torr gas pressure of Filippov type plasma focus is studied experimentally. By using two tridimensional magnetic probes on top of the anode surface, the current sheath velocity is measured for argon, oxygen and nitrogen. Additionally, the effect of charging voltage on the current sheath velocity is studied in both axial and radial phases. We found that, the maximum current sheath velocities at both radial and axial phases are respectively 4.33 ± 0.28 (cm/µs) and 3.92 ± 0.75 (cm/µs) with argon as the working gas at 17 kV. Also, the minimum values of current sheath velocity are 1.48 ± 0.15 (cm/µs) at the radial phase and 1.14 ± 0.09 (cm/µs) at the axial phase with oxygen at 12 kV. The current sheath velocity at the radial phase is higher than that at the axial phase for all gases and voltages. In this study, variation of the full width half maximum (FWHM) of magnetic probe signals with voltage is investigated for different gases at radial and axial phases.

Using the tridimensional magnetic probe, the current sheath velocity at 0.25 Torr is studied in Sahand, a Filippov-type plasma focus facility. The current sheath velocity in argon-filled plasma focus with different percentages of helium impurity at different operating voltages was studied. The highest average current sheath velocity of 12.26 ± 1.51 cm μs −1 at the top of the anode in the axial phase was achieved at 17 kV. Minimum average current sheath velocity is 5.24 ± 1.18 cm μs −1 at 12 kV with 80% argon + 20% helium as a working gas. The full width at half-maximum of peaks of the magnetic probe was found to be inversely related to the current sheath velocity, i.e. smaller at higher voltages for different impurity and decreased with increasing of impurity.