Design of a material ablation test stand

A test stand is being designed to measure the ablation rate and threshold of EML related materials. A plasma armature is used to ablate the surface of the test material. The heat flux and exposure time are controlled by setting the armature current, augmentation current and backfill gas pressure. Ablation parameters may be determined by measuring the free arc's velocity under various material surface heat loads. A completely closed-form solution has been developed to help quantify ablation parameters more accurately and efficiently. An algorithm is proposed for computing operating parameters, Recommendations for technical specifications of the test stand are provided.