Transportable high-energy high-current inductive storage GW generator

A number of high power applications require a transportable high energy, high current GW generator to drive a pulsed power system at the output. A first prototype, based on exploding wire technology and using an H bridge circuit configuration, was developed at Loughborough University a few years ago and reported previously. The present stage of the work has necessitated the development of a more powerful and energetic source, and this is now based on inductive storage technology. A 400 kJ capacitor bank is connected by a high Coulomb explosively driven closing switch with an air cored 0.6 MV transformer, an exploding wire array and a high power diode based on a polarity dependent spark gap completing the arrangement. The GW generator, including the command and control module, is accommodated in two ISO containers. The various components of the generator are described in the paper, together with results obtained from full scale tests.