Large Area, High Reliability Liquid Dielectric Systems: Provisional Design Criteria and Experimental Approaches to More Realistic Projections

Abstract

In the Electra program a number of candidate designs have been developed for pulsed power systems to drive KrF lasers in an inertial confinement fusion power plant. All use coaxial roughly 1.5 MV water energy stores and oil insulation; most use oil-insulated magnetic switches. The pulse power must operate for at least two years between failures. The combination of large areas and high required reliability makes the design a very large extrapolation from experience. To reduce the uncertainties, we are planning tests in the Electra program. The Electra program will progressively eliminate the uncertainties associated with this extrapolation by constructing large and full-scale prototype modules. Still, there is much we can do in the immediate planned testing to reduce the uncertainties and justify the design criteria we have provisionally adopted for the power plant modules, and to help design prototypes. In this paper we discuss uncertainties in three areas; reliability over many pulses, extrapolation to large areas, and factors that may increase or decrease the safe fields. Then we show the design of the oil test hardware that we are planning based on these considerations.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA638512

Entities

People

  • D. Morton
  • D. Weidenheimer
  • I. Smith
  • J. Sethian
  • L . Schlitt

Organizations

  • Titan Corp.

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Design Criteria
  • Electrodes
  • Energy
  • Environmental Pollutants
  • High Reliability
  • Krypton Fluoride Lasers
  • Lepidoptera
  • Military Research
  • Polarity
  • Power
  • Probability
  • Probability Distributions
  • Pulse Transformers
  • Pulsed Power
  • Reliability
  • Transformers

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Microelectromechanical Systems