Design and test of a compact capacitor-based energy storage pulsed power module with high repetitive discharge frequency

Abstract

Advance in electromagnetic launch have put forward higher requirements for the pulsed power supply(PPS). A capacitive PPS for electromagnetic launcher has been constructed in NJUST recently with a basic cell of 220kJ energy storage, which has a good scalability. Design of integrated 220kJ pulsed power unit (PFU) was demonstrated in the paper. To meet the requirement of compact structure of PPS, the device design and system layout are considered and combined with simulation to optimize the magnetic field distribution in the constrained space. In order to achieve the function of continuous discharge, the reliability of thermal management system, control system and safety protection system are focused on. System description was presented in the paper. A series of experiments were conducted to verify the performance of the module. The results show that the PFU shows good reliability in 10 consecutive burst-shot tests. Due to the modular setup of this pulse formation network, it can be extended to a larger-scale pulse forming network. Flexible current pulse shapes can be formed by controlling the charging voltage and the trigger time of the PFU.