5.8-GW Discharge Brick for Linear Transformer Driver

Discharge brick is the basic discharge unit of fast linear transformer driver (LTD). It is important to reduce the scale and cost of LTD device by increasing discharge current and brick power of the brick. In this article, a discharge brick is designed for LTD, including a 200-kV three-electrode field-distortion gas switch (TFGS) and two 100-kV/100-nF capacitors. At the same time, a low inductance liquid resistor load (LRL) is designed for simulating the actual working condition of discharge brick in LTD cavity. The brick inductance is tested with 200 nH, and when operating voltage at ±100 kV, the peak discharge current and brick power can reach 62 kA and 5.8-GW, respectively. The trigger test of 10 000 shots with different switch structure has been proceeded, and the pre-fire rate is lower than 0.3%.