Influence of electrode erosion on self-breakdown voltage distribution in gas switches

Gas switch is one of the key elements in a fast linear transformer driver (FLTD). Self-breakdown voltage distribution of the switch, which is affected by the electrode erosion during the discharge process, directly influences the stability of the FLTD system. In this article, a semi-empirical model has been proposed to calculate the electrode erosion process, and the surface alteration has been introduced to calculate the self-breakdown voltage distribution. In our research, simulated surface alteration is in good agreement with the experimental result, and the surface alteration has a significant impact on the self-breakdown voltage distribution. The change process of the distribution has been simulated in our model and the calculation result conformed to the experiment one very well. The difference between the calculated distribution and the experimental one is less than 10% with the confidence probability 0.95.