Delay time of a vacuum gap triggered by an exploding wire

The experimental results of delay time of a vacuum gap triggered by an exploding wire plasma have been reported. It consists of explosion delay time and propagation delay time. The explosion delay time has been found to be dependent on the parameters of the exploding wire and the exploding wire circuit and is independent of vacuum gap configuration. The propagation delay time depends on the properties of the exploding wire plasma and vacuum gap parameters such as the number of injection slots, gap spacing, gap polarity, etc. In the absence of prebreakdown current in the vacuum gap, the breakdown can be initiated only after the plasma completely bridges the gap spacing. Under this specific condition, it has been shown that the delay time data can be used to calculate the plasma velocity.