Publications

Resistance of a water spark

Warne, Larry K.; Jorgenson, Roy E.; Lehr, J.M.

The later time phase of electrical breakdown in water is investigated for the purpose of improving understanding of the discharge characteristics. One dimensional simulations in addition to a zero dimensional lumped model are used to study the spark discharge. The goal is to provide better electrical models for water switches used in the pulse compression section of pulsed power systems. It is found that temperatures in the discharge channel under representative drive conditions, and assuming small initial radii from earlier phases of development, reach levels that are as much as an order of magnitude larger than those used to model discharges in atmospheric gases. This increased temperature coupled with a more rapidly rising conductivity with temperature than in air result in a decreased resistance characteristic compared to preceding models. A simple modification is proposed for the existing model to enable the approximate calculation of channel temperature and incorporate the resulting conductivity increase into the electrical circuit for the discharge channel. Comparisons are made between the theoretical predictions and recent experiments at Sandia. Although present and past experiments indicated that preceding late time channel models overestimated channel resistance, the calculations in this report seem to underestimate the resistance relative to recent experiments. Some possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.