Experimental ablation processes study on an electrothermal launcher
An experimental parametric study has been performed to analyse the influence of time on the ablation processes in the capillary of an electrothermal launcher. A 600 kJ, 16 cells pulse forming network (PFN) was used. The time discharge was varied from 350 /spl mu/s to 100 /spl mu/s by changing the cell number (from 16 to 4) and then the capacitance (from 1760 /spl mu/F to 440 /spl mu/F). The parametric study has been performed at a constant voltage level (13 kV). The ablated masses have been measured for different time discharge and the results have been compared with a 0-D code.
Characterization of Short Intense Pulsed Electrothermal Plasma Capillaries for Use as Fusion and Launchers Heat Flux Sources
Electrothermal plasma sources operating in the confined capillary arc regime are characterized by the magnitude and shape of the discharge current. The desired plasma parameters at the source exit, especially the pressure and heat flux, are highly dependent on the arc due to the effect of the arc radiant energy that ablates the inner wall of the source. These sources have applications in fusion as drivers for pellet injectors and as high heat flux sources for fusion materials studies. The high-pressure high heat flux flow is also of application in mass accelerators and launch technology systems. The 1-D, time-dependent ETFLOW capillary code models the plasma generation and flow inside the capillary discharges and determines the plasma parameters. The input file to the code is the discharge current density providing the Joule heating in the energy equation. A circuit module has been developed and incorporated in the code to generate desired current shapes and magnitudes. The current pulse length was varied between 5 and 100 μs at constant amplitude of 50 kA, and then the pulse amplitude was varied between 10 and 200 kA at a constant pulse length of 20 μs. Increasing the pulse length while maintaining its amplitude increases the plasma density and the total ablated mass, which have accumulation behavior by increasing the pulse length, and subsequently increases the exit pressure from 60 to 410 MPa in the cases studied herein. The pressure increase allows the thermalization of the plasma particles through more collisions, which reduces the plasma temperature by about 0.2 eV. The bulk velocity follows the trend of the plasma temperature, but at shorter pulse lengths the total ablated mass is lower and enables the plasma to carry the particles with increasing velocity. Increasing the pulse amplitude up to 200 kA increases the density to about 18 kg/m3 and the bulk velocity, which varies between 6.1 and 10.7 km/s. A sharp increase in most plasma parameters occurs as a result of the increase in the pulse amplitude.
Ablation Controlled Arcs
An experimental and theoretical study on ablation controlled arcs in cylindrical tubes is presented. Measuring techniques for stagnation pressure, electric field strength, mass ablation rate, and arc cross section are described with which a comprehensive set of experimental data is obtained for blackened PTFE as a reference material. These data are interpreted with an isothermal two-zone model that consistently accounts for the balance of mass and axial momentum and yields simple scaling laws for the arc characteristics. Consistent agreement with the experimental data is found for an arc temperature TA = 19 000 ± 2000 K, a vapor layer temperature Tv = 3400 ± 200 K, and a transparently radiated fraction of the arc power of v = 0.32 ± 0.03. The vapor temperature can be explained with a photoablation mechanism. The ablation arc model allows quantifying of the phenomena related to nozzle clogging in gas-blast circuit breakers, namely flow blocking and reverse flow heating. How these phenomena determine the pressure rise in self-blast circuit breakers is shown.