Study of the Rogowski coil response in a plasma focus device

Abstract

In plasma physics is very important understand the behaviour and amplitude of high intensity currents. The high intensity current pulses are measured by resistive and inductive sensors. Coil configurations are employed in the same form as inductive sensors. Rogowski coil is a representative example; that coil consists of a toroidal-shaped winding. In this work we built a Rogowski coil. The coil operation was realized in a plasma focus device. The results show a good performance. We also used the coil to measure the current and voltage changes with respect to time, during the normal operation of the plasma focus device. The maximum value of the current (348kA) was obtained. As a complementary work, we analysed the results by changing the central electrode of the device (needle electrode, gap electrode and plane electrode). It founds that the pinch time is independent of the configuration of the central electrode.