Side-by-Side Comparison of Standard-Brick and Dry-Brick Pulser Configurations

Abstract

The building block of many pulsed-power systems, known as a brick, can be thought of as the smallest, independent unit from which the entire pulser is built. In standard brick configuration, two capacitors and a spark-gap switch are connected in series, and in dry brick configuration, the two capacitors are placed in parallel and a multi-gap, multi-channel “ball” switch follows them in series. The scaling relations of pulser's output parameters as a function of pulser number of bricks, N, the pulser brick type (standard or dry), and pulser's extra inductance are derived and briefly discussed. Simulations of pulser performance into different loads (matched load, inductive load, and x-pinch load) are also presented.