Design and performance of a 300 kJ pulsed power module for ETC application

In order to support the Korean electrothermal chemical (ETC) launcher program, a 2.4 MJ pulsed power supply system is scheduled to be constructed for the ETC launcher driver. The overall power system consists of eight capacitive 300 kT energy storage banks. In this paper we describe the design features, setup and test operation result of the 300 kJ pulsed power module. Each capacitor bank of the 300 kT module consists of six 22 kV 50 kJ capacitors. A triggered vacuum switch (TVS-43) was adopted as the main pulse power-closing switch and operation characteristics were investigated. Crowbar diode circuits, variable multi-tap inductors and energy dumping systems are connected to each high power capacitor bank via bus-bars and coaxial cables. A parallel crowbar diode stack is fabricated in coaxial structure with two series 13.5 kV, 60 kA avalanche diodes. The main design parameters of the 300 Kj module are a maximum current of 180 kA and a pulse width of 0.5-3 ms. The electrical performances of each component and current output variations into resistive loads have been investigated.