Abstract
We have developed an empirical electrical-breakdown relation that can be used to design large-area water-insulated pulsed-power systems. Such systems often form an integral part of multiterawatt pulsed-power accelerators, and may be incorporated in future petawatt-class machines. We find that complete dielectric failure is likely to occur in water between a significantly field-enhanced anode and a less-enhanced cathode when . In this expression is the peak value in time of the spatially averaged electric field between the anode and cathode (in ), is the peak voltage across the electrodes, is the distance between the anode and cathode, and is the temporal width (in ) of the voltage pulse at 63% of peak. This relation is based on 25 measurements for which , , and . The normalized standard deviation of the differences between these measurements and the associated predictions of the relation is 12%.
- Received 24 March 2006
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.9.070401
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