Expansion of Plasma of Electrically Exploding Single Copper Wire Under 4.5 kA–9.5 kA/Wire

Abstract

The experimental system for electrically exploding single metal wire has been designed and manufactured. Expansion of the dense plasma column formed from an electrically exploding Cu wire of diameter 30 μm has been studied with a high-speed photographer to obtain the time-dependent radius (R-t) curve. The experimental results demonstrate that the mean expansion rate of the dense plasma column is 1.94 μm/ns, 2.6 μm/ns and 3.75 μm/ns according to the peak pulse current 4.5 kA, 7 kA and 9.5 kA respectively. The results can be beneficial to giving a profound understanding of the early stage of wire-array Z-pinch physics and to improvement on their design.