Experimental investigations on operation capacity of triggered vacuum switches

The triggered vacuum switch (TVS) is the most successful controlling switch in the field of pulse power. We introduced the axial magnetic arc-controlling technique from the vacuum interrupters applied in a power system, that greatly improves TVS' characteristics. In the paper, we made a series of experiments on the sample TVSs with high current LC loop, and obtained their breaking limitation under different loop frequency, which corresponds to different current decline rates and different arcing times. Experimental setup and results were introduced. Analysis shows that the current decline rate dominates breaking current limitation of TVSs. Arcing time affects breaking to some extent. We can expect TVS operation under the conditions of 10 kA/10 kHz. Because of the positive VI characteristic of vacuum arcs, TVSs can be used for higher current operations in parallel with synchronous triggering.