Recovery characteristic of exploding wire fuses in air and vacuum

The dielectric strength of exploded wire fuses during the vaporization and after recovery period and fuse resistivity are functions of time and depend on the medium surrounding the fuse channel. When fuses are used as opening switches in inductive storage systems, the above parameters determine the efficiency of power flow from the storage to the load. Specifically, design of experiments using loads with variable impedance, such as imploding plasma, requires detailed information on the fuse characteristics during the time when the load impedance is changing. To provide data that determine the interaction between fuses and variable impedance loads, inductive and recovery electric fields and fuse resistance in air and vacuum were studied. The results show that inductive field amplitude follows the dependence on time needed to vaporize the fuse in a manner similar to that established for fuses in other media. The characteristics of recovery rates of fuses in air and vacuum differ drastically due to the early onset of ionization in fuse channels in vacuum.