• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.228.2-228.2
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• 2016

The triggered vacuum switch (TVS) discharges high current through two processes. In the first process, an igniting plasma is generated at a trigger system, and the next process that a main discharge is taken place sequentially at a six-gap rod electrode within a few microsecond. In general, a triggered voltage producing the igniting plasma is increased. However, after several hundred shots, it goes down and stable, in our experiment the trigger voltage is about 5 kV after 250 shots. This triggered characteristics comes from the ceramic insulator which is covered by an electrode material, therefore we have focused on the first igniting plasma process. The igniting plasma has been generated at the surface of a ceramic insulator under a strong electric field. The electric field can be increased through modifying geometries of trigger components which compose of a trigger pin, a ceramic insulator and an enclosed holder. We fabricated not only two types of trigger pin which are a plane head and an umbrella head type, but two different holders which are a concave and a convex type. In this paper the result that the dependency of geometries for these four combined types is included, but the study of the ceramic insulator is not. The research of the ceramic insulator will be announced in the other paper.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2003

Design and test results of a VRAG(Vacuum Rotary Arc Gap) switch were presented. To control the damage of electrodes caused by the vacuum arc, Lorentz's force by the radial magnetic field between spiral electrodes was used to rotate the vacuum uc. VRAG switch electrodes were made of the material of CuCr and OFHC. Gap distance between two spiral type electrodes for the rotation of the arc discharge is 8, 10, 12mm. In the cathode, one trigger electrode was inserted into each spiral wing. Normal operation of the VRAG switch was confirmed with 10.6[$mutextrm{s}$]of trigger delay and 2~3[$mutextrm{s}$] of the jitter time. The speed of the vacuum arc was measured to be 0.6 ~ 1[km/s] by a motion analyzer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.201.2-201.2
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• 2016

The triggered vacuum switch (TVS) is widely used as a high power switch in the field of pulsed power application. TVS can produce current of higher than 100 kA within a microsecond after being triggered. A triggering high voltage pulse generator supplies a high voltage signal to the trigger system to initiate the discharge between a trigger pin and one of main electrode. The trigger system, which consists of a tungsten trigger electrode and cylindrical ceramic insulator around it, is normally installed at the center of main cathode electrode. The discharging characteristics of the trigger system strongly depend on the geometry, electrode material, vacuum pressure and so on. In addition, we especially will focus on the developing a triggering pulse generator, which can vary not only value of voltage but also pulse duration, because its properties gives pivot influences on the TVS discharge. To verify such effects, we made a 3.3 kJ TVS set-up initially. Thus we will discuss some of prominent results from 3.3 kJ TVS system. In parallel we will show on the design of 300 kJ TVS system for the high current in the future.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.144.1-144.1
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• 2015

The triggered vacuum switch(TVS) is a one of the important component in consisiting high power control systems(HPCS). The operating condition is depended on material, geometry, operating power and so on. Our research is focused on the effects of thses basic properties and ptimized condition, because these are critical conditons in understanding the TVS operation. Our experiment is accomplished with a copper electrode and a tungsten trigger pin after being assembled into a vacuum chamber. The operating voltage in our system is more than dozens of kV at the 5kV trigger pulse. Our goal is up to 300kJ, therefore the currents should be more optimized in additional experiments,

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.51 no.12
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• pp.584-590
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• 2002

Crowbar system is usually applied to a pulsed power system in which a capacitor bank is discharged into a load. This provides a free wheeling path for the load current and prevents the capacitor from recharging due to a reverse voltage. Usually diodes have been used as a crowbar switch, but it is not a practical system because the cost of the diodes goes up enormously with increasing the system voltage and current. This paper presents a novel protection scheme of a charging and discharging system of a 300 kJ capacitor bank using a low-cost crowbar system which consists of a crowbar switch and resistors. Triggered vacuum switch(TVS) was used for a crowbar switch, and Rogowski coil was used to determine a trigger time of TVS. When this crowbar system is applied to our pulsed power system which consists of capacitor bank($123muF$), inductor() for forming a pulse, load resistor$(100 m\Omega)$, and a closing switch, instantaneous reversal voltage of capacitor bank could be limited less than 1.8 ㎸ until capacitor bank was charred to 17 ㎸.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.07c
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• pp.1823-1826
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• 2002

The purpose of this experiment was to develope Triggered Vacuum Switch (TVS) for the high voltage and high current. The TVS has an array of rods of alternate polarity in which a fixed gap spacing is maintained between the rods. The cross section of each rod has trapezoidal shape. It consists of electrode, ceramic chamber, getter and trigger. Currently, triggered vacuum switch (TVS) with seal-off has been designed and fabricated at PAL. An experimentation and trigger devices for TVS were designed for testing characteristics of electricity. For making the prototype of TVS, it is developed of fabrication process and fined of electrode material. The fabrication of the TVS is a lot of process which have manufacturing of part, chemical clean, ceramic brazing and metal welding. The fabricated TVS is tested of leak for vacuum, hold-off voltage and conditioning of trigger system. The TVS has pinch-off after it is removed of gas in the TVS and activated of getter in degassing furnace. The prototype TVS tested about 20 kV, 75 kA, 83 ${\mu}s$ with 100 kJ capacitor bank and inductance 5 ${\mu}H$. This paper describes the results of tests and the characteristics of the switch.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.679-684
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• 2000

Closing switch, key component of pulsed power system, is constructed simply and used frequently due to the easy control and manufacture of one. The kind of one are spark-gap, triggered vacuum switch, pseudo-spark switch and INPIStron. But the electrode of spark gap switch is damaged with the hot spot by Z-pinch and then the life of one become short. INPIStron with inverse pinch effect has long life but it is difficult trigger system to provide uniform discharge between cathode and anode. In this paper, the design and manufacturing of INPIStron with gas puffing trigger method in order to supply uniform discharge inter-electrode and the performance of the developed INPIStron applied to 500[kA]-2[MJ] pulsed power system is presented.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.217-223
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• 2012

This paper presents design and operational characteristics of 150 MW pulse power system for high current pulse forming network to control trigger time. The system is composed of two capacitor bank modules. Each capacitor bank module consist of a trigger vacuum switch, 9k 33kJ capacitor, an energy dump circuit, a crowbar circuit and a pulse shaping inductor and is connected in parallel. It is controlled by trigger controller to select operational module and determine triggering time. Pspice simulation was conducted about determining parameters of components such as crowbar circuit, capacitor, pulse forming inductor, trigger vacuum switch and predicting results of experiment circuit. The result of the experiment was in good agreement with the result of the simulation. The various current shapes with 300~650 us pulse width is formed by sequential firing time control of capacitor bank module. The maximum current is about 40 kA during simultaneous triggering of two capacitor bank modules. The developed 150 MW pulse power system can be applied to high current pulse power system such as rock fragmentation power sources, Rail gun, Coil gun, nano-powers, high power microwave.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2000.07c
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• pp.2126-2128
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• 2000

A TVS(triggered vacuum switch) use in high-power, high-current, and high-frequency conversion and switching circuits. The TVS has a six-gap trapezoidal rod electrode system. The electrode system consists of three cathode and anode rods which are made with OFHC. The trigger unit of the TVS is located at the cathode base center. To obtain a wide variety of characteristics this paper describes the results of tests.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.07c
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• pp.1603-1605
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• 2001

Eight 300kJ modularized capacitor-banks have been constructed. These modules have been installed and assembled to make a 2.4MJ pulse power system (PPS). This 2.4MJ PPS was developed to be used as a driver of an electrothermal-chemical (ETC) gun. Each capacitor bank has six 22kV, 50kJ capacitors connected in parallel. A triggered vacuum switch (TVS-43) was adopted as a main pulse power-closing switch in each module. The module also contains a crowbar circuit made of three high-voltage diode-stacks, a multi-tap inductor and an energy-dumping resistor. Various current shapes have been formed by a sequential firing of multiple capacitor banks. Resistive dummy load has been used and various combinations of experimental parameters, such as charging voltage, trigger time and inductance, were tested to make flexible current shapes.