Effective Coupling of Pulsed Power to Chemically Reactive Metallic

The pulsed electrical excitation of reactive metals like aluminum in water triggers a fast and highly energetic chemical reaction generating gaseous products. For applications such as fuses, safe explosives or fast gas generation, it is desirable to maximize the ratio of conductor mass to stored electrical energy while rapidly attaining a high resistive state. Various techniques have been used to partly meet this requirement. These techniques included double pulse application, pre-dispersion of metallic material prior to pulse application, and coaxial metallic system in which a metal of lower boiling point is surrounded by a metal of higher boiling point. The preliminary test results demonstrated that the efficiency of the pulsed power in deriving the chemical action can be greatly improved by these techniques.