High-speed optical diagnostic of an exploding wire fuse

Explosive flux compression generators generate hundreds of kiloamperes and voltages of a few kilovolts. A power conditioning stage is required since typically voltages in the hundreds of kilovolts range are needed. Inductive energy storage systems with an opening switch provide the necessary voltage gain. In our application, the opening switch has been implemented as an exploding wire fuse. The voltage gain, and hence the performance of the system, is greatly dependent on the opening switch. We utilized high-speed optical imaging (up to 10/sup 7/ pictures/s) to assess the performance of the exploding wire fuse.