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Plasma Focus Case Study

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In a dense plasma focus [1,2] only a small portion of the energy from the capacitor discharge is used to produce a single plasma focus event. Efforts have been made to combine several plasma focus devices in different configurations to enhance neutron generation and charged particle emission [3, 4] so the energy from the capacitor discharge can be used more efficiently. Staged plasma focus by using two plasma focus guns that are placed in front of each other was suggested to produce two plasma focusing events. The operation of proposed configuration wasn’t successful due to occurrence of unwanted early discharge due to precursor radiation from one of the plasma foci in the staged plasma focus device [3]. To solve this issue a disk was …show more content…

The voltage spikes across plasma tubes have been found to be correlated to the plasma focusing events accompanied by ion beam emission and x-ray radiation. Fig.1. (a), and (b) show the top view and side view of the plasma focus device respectively. Three coaxial electrodes are insulated by two Pyrex tubes from each other. The inner electrode or anode is made from a copper rod of a= 5 mm in radius and it is connected to the capacitor bank through a spark gap switch. The middle floating electrode is a thin cylindrical copper tube located at radius of and b=15 mm. The outer electrode that is connected to the ground terminal of the capacitor bank is formed by 12 copper rods that are placed at c=45 mm radius from the axis of the device. The lengths of floating and outer electrodes are the same (h =70 mm from the copper based plate) while the length of anode is H =65 mm from the base plate. Two Pyrex tubes are used to insulate inner electrode from floating electrode and floating electrode from outer electrode. The thickness of both Pyrex tubes are the same and is 2 mm. d= 30mm and D=40mm. The device was operated in Argon gas and the filling pressure is within the range 0.1 Torr to 3 Torr. The stored energy was 2kJ (C=4.5 μF, V=28kV). During the discharge, it is expected two current sheaths, one between anode and floating electrode and the other between the floating electrode and outer electrode have to be formed at

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