Fast exploding-foil switch techniques for capacitor bank and flux compressor output conditioning

This paper describes exploding foil opening and closing switch techniques for use in capacitor bank and flux compressor output conditioning circuits. A simple approach was evolved during an extensive experimental programme, aimed at producing a current pulse with a rise time of a few nanoseconds from the output of a flux compressor (or flux compression generator). Capacitor-based experiments provide data for an empirical model for copper foils, used subsequently in a computer program to predict the results of experiments in which exploding foils are used as both opening and closing switches. The switches operate automatically, thus avoiding the problems of triggering between stages of a conditioning circuit. Data from a 1 MJ flux-compressor exploding-foil opening-switch experiment with a run time of 160 mu s are presented and analysed using the theoretical model.