PBFA Z: A 55 TW/4.5 MJ electrical generator
PBFA Z is a new 55 TW/4.5 MJ short pulse electrical driver located at Sandia National Laboratories. The authors 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 a 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, they 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 {approximately} 5%. Using a 2-cm radius and a 2-cm length tungsten wire array with 240, 7.5-{micro}m diameter wires (4.1-mg mass) as the z-pinch load, they achieved x-ray powers of 200 TW and x-ray energies of 1.85 MJ as measured by x-ray diodes and resistive bolometry.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 510407
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-97-0172C; CONF-970503-139; ON: DE97007128; TRN: 97:013454
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 17. IEEE particle accelerator conference, Vancouver (Canada), 12-16 May 1997; Other Information: PBD: [1997]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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