Two dimensional triangulation of breakdown in a high voltage coaxial gap

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Plasma Physics
• High Voltage Engineering

Background:

• High-voltage vacuum gaps are crucial in many electrical systems.
• Precisely locating breakdown events is essential for understanding and mitigating electrical discharge phenomena.
• Current methods for breakdown localization may lack accuracy or scalability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel technique for accurately determining the azimuthal position of breakdown in high-voltage coaxial vacuum gaps.
• To assess the scalability and accuracy of the proposed method across different experimental setups.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing an array of three magnetic field probes positioned around the anode electrode.
• Measuring the azimuthal component of the magnetic field at each probe.
• Applying Ampère's law with peak magnetic field values and breakdown current to calculate distances from probes to the breakdown channel.
• Triangulating the breakdown location using the intersection of circles derived from calculated distances.

Main Results:

• The technique successfully triangulates the azimuthal position of breakdown in a high-voltage coaxial vacuum gap.
• Validation on two distinct devices (UCSD coaxial gap and COBRA pulsed power facility) demonstrates the method's accuracy.
• Results indicate the technique is accurate and scales effectively between different experimental apparatus.

Conclusions:

• The described magnetic probe technique offers a reliable and accurate method for localizing breakdown events in high-voltage coaxial vacuum gaps.
• This approach provides valuable insights into electrical discharge physics and can be applied to various high-voltage systems.
• The demonstrated scalability suggests broad applicability in research and development of high-voltage technologies.