Capacitor and rail-gap development for the Atlas machine Marx modules

This paper presents the engineering issues and development criteria utilized to evolve the Atlas Marx bank pulse power components. The capacitor and rail-gap required alterations from existing designs to minimize system inductance and component count, maximize reliability, and enhance maintainability. For the capacitors, development has resulted in a plastic cased device with double ended bushings. The design of the capacitors' output electrodes, foil packs, and internal interconnect webbing results in a capacitor with improved performance. The capacitors are rated at 33.5 uF and 60 kV and are housed in a 28 in. x 29 in. x 13 in. fiberglass case. Terminal inductance is less than 15 nH with a design discharge current greater than 650 kA. An improved ''third generation'' rail-gap will be utilized and is a product of the ACE machine developments at Maxwell Laboratories. The gap has a polyurethane body and one piece electrodes. To minimize prefires, a modified internal profile reduces the E-field and increases tracking length between the electrodes. With an individual Marx stage charged ''+'' and ''-'' and a trigger rail with 50/50 grading (mid-plane), external trigger bias or coupling components are not required. This further reduces system component count. To further reduce gap prefires and environmental concerns, high pressure air, instead of the typical Argon/SF6 mixture, will be used. The metallic switching by-products will form insulating oxides and the gap flushing procedures are simplified. To ensure multi-channel discharges, fast dV/dT trigger voltages (∼30 kV/nS), similar to those developed for the Staged Theta-Pinch railgaps (a Scyllac era machine at Los Alamos), will be utilized