New IES scheme for power conditioning at ultra-high currents: From concept to MHD modeling and first experiments

This work introduces an inductive energy storage (IES) scheme which aims pulsed-power conditioning at multi- MJ energies. The key element of the scheme represents an additional plasma volume, where a magnetically accelerated wire array is used for inductive current switching. This plasma acceleration volume is connected in parallel to a microsecond capacitor bank and to a 100-ns current ruse-time useful load. Simple estimates suggest that optimized scheme parameters could be reachable even when operating at ultra-high currents. We describe first proof-of-principle experiments carried out on GIT12 generator [1] at the wire-array current level of 2 MA. The obtained confirmation of the concept consists in generation of a 200 kV voltage directly at an inductive load. This load voltage value can be already sufficient to transfer the available magnetic energy into kinetic energy of a liner at this current level. Two-dimensional modeling with the radiational MHD numerical tool Marple [2] confirms the development of inductive voltage in the system. However, the average voltage increase is accompanied by short-duration voltage drops due to interception of the current by the low-density upstream plasma. Upon our viewpoint, this instability of the current distribution represents the main physical limitation to the scheme performance.