An explosively driven high-power microwave pulsed power system

Abstract

The increased popularity of high power microwave systems and the various sources to drive them is the motivation behind the work to be presented. A stand-alone, self-contained explosively driven high power microwave pulsed power system has been designed, built, and tested at Texas Tech University's Center for Pulsed Power and Power Electronics. The system integrates four different sub-units that are composed of a battery driven prime power source utilizing capacitive energy storage, a dual stage helical flux compression generator as the main energy amplification device, an integrated power conditioning system with inductive energy storage including a fast opening electro-explosive switch, and a triode reflex geometry virtual cathode oscillator as the microwave radiating source. This system has displayed a measured electrical source power level of over 5 GW and peak radiated microwaves of about 200 MW. It is contained within a 15 cm diameter housing and measures 2 m in length, giving a housing volume of slightly less than 39 l. The system and its sub-components have been extensively studied, both as integrated and individual units, to further expand on components behavior and operation physics. This report will serve as a detailed design overview of each of the four subcomponents and provide detailed analysis of the overall system performance and benchmarks.

Robert Barker Memorial Session: Leadership in Plasma Science and Applications

“…29, perform better, while small generators with β ∼ 0.6 barely exhibit any energy amplification [81]. Very much based on the results gained from this five-year MURI program, Texas Tech was able to design and demonstrate stand-alone (no external power) FCG-based HPM sources, COMSED 1 and 2 in 2009 and 2011, respectively [82]- [84]. This HPM source produced in excess of 100-MW output power in a roughly 100-ns pulse at single-digit gigahertz frequencies.…”

The concept of a new two-stage fuse for high power pulse forming

“…Hence, the goal of PFS is usually to maximize the above-mentioned parameters in order to cooperate effectively with the load. Single-stage FF for applications in pulse forming systems described in the available literature present appropriate high voltage pulse generation properties, reaching values from several dozen 27 , 31 to even 400 kV 32 , 33 , with simultaneous current limitation steepness in the order of several dozen to a little over one hundred kA/μs. The achieved instantaneous peak power values of the generated pulses reach hundreds of MW or several GW.…”

A compact two-way high-power microwave combiner

“…[1][2][3][4] Based on the limited power capacity of the HPM sources, the HPM combinations were proposed to further improve the output power. 3 The HPM combination in waveguides and by sharing the same output horn has the advantage in controlling the space radiation, and preventing the spatial disturbance among the array antennas from multiseparated HPM sources.…”