Conference Proceeding

PBFA Z: A 55 TW/4.5 MJ electrical generator

Sandia Nat. Labs., Albuquerque, NM
06/1997; DOI:10.1109/PAC.1997.749986 In proceeding of: Particle Accelerator Conference, 1997. Proceedings of the 1997, Volume: 1
Source: IEEE Xplore

ABSTRACT PBFA Z is a new 55 TW/4.5 MJ short pulse electrical driver located
at Sandia National Laboratories. We use PBFA Z to magnetically-implode
plasma shells. These configurations are historically known as Z pinches.
The pulsed power design of PBFA Z is based on conventional single-pulse
Marx generator, water-line pulse-forming technology used on the earlier
Saturn and PBFA II accelerators. PBFA Z stores 11.4 MJ in its 36 Marx
generators, couples 4.5 MJ in 55-TW/105-ns pulse to the output water
transmission lines, and delivers up to 3.0 MJ and 40 TW of electrical
energy to the Z-pinch load. Depending on the initial load inductance and
the implosion time, we attain peak currents of 16-20 MA with a rise time
of 105 ns. Current is fed to the Z-pinch load through self
magnetically-insulated transmission lines (MITLs). Peak electric fields
in the MITLs exceed 2 MV/cm. The current from the four independent
conical disk MITLs is combined together in a double post-hole vacuum
convolute with an efficiency greater than 95%. The measured system
performance of the water transmission lines, the vacuum insulator stack,
the MITLs, and the double post-hole vacuum convolute differed from
preshot predictions by ~5%. Using a 2-cm radius and a 2-cm length
tungsten wire array with 240, 7.5-μm diameter wires (4.1-mg mass) as
the Z-pinch load, we achieved X-ray powers of 200 TW and X-ray energies
of 1.85 MJ as measured by X-ray diodes and resistive bolometry

0 0

R. B. Spielman