PBFA II progress and plans
Considerable progress has been made on the Particle Beam Fusion Accelerator II (PBFA II) since the first shot was taken in December 1985. The 36 Marx generators, which store 12 MJ, have proven to be very reliable and are routinely synchronized better than the 40-ns design goal. The water-dielectric pulse-forming section has provided 2.9 MJ in a 55-ns pulse. A total energy of 2.2 MJ has been stored in the magnetically-insulated vacuum inductive voltage adder situated between the pulse forming section and the diode load. An energy of 1.3 MJ, or more than 10% of the energy stored in the Marx genertors, has been coupled to a blade electron load. Calculated peak open circuit voltages of 22 MV and measured peak short circuit currents of 6.4 MA have been obtained. Recently, synchronization of the 36 pulse-forming modules was imporved substantially by modifications made to the laser-triggered gas switches. First-to-last (i.e., total) module timing spread is now routinely less than 20 ns for 36-module shots and less than 10 ns for 18-module shots. These achievements have made PBFA II a very powerful laboratory tool for studying the phsyics of ion beam generation, ion beam focusing, and target interaction experiments. 40 refs.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 5181478
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-87-2116C; CONF-871093-6; ON: DE88007606
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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ACCELERATORS
BEAMS
DOCUMENT TYPES
ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT
ION BEAMS
ION SOURCES
MARX GENERATORS
MODIFICATIONS
PARTICLE BEAM FUSION ACCELERATOR
PLASMA SWITCHES
POWER SUPPLIES
PROGRESS REPORT
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
SWITCHES
SYNCHRONIZATION
WAVE FORMS