Abstract
The passage of transient electric currents through a gas into a solid occurs in high-voltage switches and in lightning strikes. The experiments reported in this paper were designed to examine the vibration of a cantilevered conductor under electromagnetic forces of the arc and structural currents. Arcs are created at low pressures in a vacuum facility and the induced vibrations of the beam are measured. It is shown that the deflections are proportional to the square of the arc currents. Further, 5-μs photographs of the 2-ms arc, using a Kerr cell, show that the arc is distorted by the magnetic field of the beam currents. A simple analytical model is shown to reproduce the basic results of the experiments.
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