Computer modeling of plasma flow switches -high current switching on procyon

Procyon is a high explosive driven pulsed power system designed to drive plasma z-pinch experiments to the 1-MJ level. Details of this system are provided elsewhere in these proceedings. The final switching stage of the Procyon system is a plasma flow switch (PFS). Our most recent experiment (4/29/1993) included a full power test of the PFS designed for the Procyon system. In this test the Mark IX explosively driven generator delivered 22 MA of current to the storage inductor. The slight flux compression that occurs in the explosively formed fuse (EFF) opening switch increased this current to 24.5 MA. The EFF then opened and switched 16.5 MA to the PFS. The PFS switched 15.5 MA to the load region (the slot that will contain an imploding foil liner in future experiments) with a 10-90 rise time of 500 ns. In this present paper we discuss the computer modeling we have done on this Procyon plasma flow switch. In the next section we discuss the design of the Procyon switch and preshot calculations. Although the April'1993 experiment was quite successful there were significant surprizes in the performance of the PFS. In the last sections of this paper we discuss the work we have done in understanding the results of this experiment and the conclusions that we have reached to date.