Breakdown Mechanism of Trigatron Gap in Air

Physical mechanism of triggering in trigatron spark gaps

The Study of Breakdown Voltages for Triggered Spark Gap Switches

This study explains the breakdown mechanism in different triggered spark gap switches. Two different trigger electrode configurations are tested for the switch predischarge operation in a nitrogen laser circuit. The behavior of the breakdown voltage, when a trigger pulse is applied to the trigger electrode, is investigated, and the results are reported. Based on the experimental measurements ne...

Using Subgridding FDTD Method to Incorporate Air Gap Breakdown in the Analysis of Lightning Induced Voltage

A subgridding formulation of Agrawal coupling equations of transmission line with branch and distributed electromagnetic excitation is proposed. This algorithm enables us to solve the transmission line system using different temporal and spatial step on different branches. The method is used to calculate the lightning induced over-voltage on the transmission line installed with air gap componen...

Measurement of Air Breakdown Voltage and Electric Field Using Standad Sphere Gap Method

Triggering of Trigatron Spark Gaps

The trigatron has been in widespread use as a demand-triggered, high-voltage switch for more than 40 years. In spite of the popularity and maturity of the technology, there persists an uncertainty over the basic physical mechanism(s) responsible for triggering breakdown in the devices. We present the results of an empirical study which directly demonstrate that in the normal operating region of...