The Electric Discharge in Superhigh Density Gas at Current Amplitude up to 5x10^5 A
Philip Rutberg, A. Bogomaz, A. Budin, M. Pinchuk, A. Savvateev
Abstract
The investigations of powerful discharge in high density hydrogen were carried out on an installation with preliminary adiabatic compression. The experiments were performed under the following conditions: stored energy of the capacitive storage - 140-450 kJ, charging voltage - 8.0-14.0 kV, discharge current amplitude- 200-600 kA, current rise rate - 10^9-10^10 A/s. The maximum particle density nmax, achieved just before the discharge, was about 2.0x10^22 cm-3. It was observed one or several compression of the discharge channel. The moments of contractions corresponds a increase of voltage on discharge gap and feature on a curve of a current. Arc parameters were calculated on the basis of the channel model. It was established that increase of the initial density of particles at increase of a current rate of rise results in reduction of arc diameter with increase of channel temperature.