High Voltage Explosive Flux Compression Generators

ABSTRACT: Helical magnetic flux compression generators have been used for five decades to amplify electrical energy and current from high explosives. Although they can now be modeled quite accurately, there are practical limitations, based on internal electrical breakdown, that limit both their compactness and ability to operate at high output voltages. The Care’n LLC proposes to overcome this limitation through careful application of 3D electrostatic and inductive electric field calculations based on magnetic and electric vector potentials. Furthermore, we will assess the heretofore unaddressed issue of MHD field generation due to the motion of insulating gas through the magnetic field. The results of these studies will be incorporated into the FCG modeling code, CAGEN, which already accurately calculates the performance of helical FCGs, without any empirical factors, in the absence of electrical breakdown. The code will then be used to explore optimization strategies that take into account, explicitly, electrical breakdown thresholds. BENEFIT: We believe that the result of completion of the Phase II R&D effort will be a robust and validated explosive flux compression generator modeling code that both calculates expected performance with unprecedented accuracy, and furthermore provides design information about electric fields within devices. These fields are the present limitation for miniaturizing generators. With this new design tool, researchers will be able to design new explosive generators for a wide variety of military and commercial applications. Heretofore, unless new generators were small excursions from proven existing designs, long experimental development were required to establish performance limitations and achieve desired specifications. Such a development path is not only costly in terms of development time, but experiments – being only single-shot – tend to be very costly. Our new design tool will allow considerable savings in development time and cost. We expect that during a Phase III, the CAGEN code will go through considerable refinement in terms of user friendliness and the rigorous testing associated with commercial software development. The Care'n LLC is planning two commercialization pathways. The first is the incorporation of the results of this project into the HFCG modeling code CAGEN. The second is the possibility that the oil servicing companies would find very small, highly efficient HFCG advantageous to their oil stimulation services.