7-412: MAGPIE ( Mega Ampere Generator for Plasma Implosion Experiments ) is a pulsed power generator based at Imperial College London , United Kingdom. The generator was originally designed to produce a current pulse with a maximum of 1.8 million amperes in 240 nanoseconds (150 nanoseconds rise time). At present the machine is operated with a maximum current of approximately 1.4 million amperes and operates as
14-406: A z-pinch facility. The generator consists of four voltage multipliers ( Marx generators ), each one containing 24 capacitors. At the maximum charging voltage of 100 kilo-volts, an output voltage of 2.4 million volts is produced and delivered into the load section. The pulses have a rise time of 150 ns and can be delivered in a high impedance load through a 1.25 Ω final line impedance. Research at
21-500: A computational point of view, through the GORGON code, and from an experimental one by means of the generator. MAGPIE is one of several similar pulsed power machines worldwide, of which the largest and most powerful is the Z-machine at Sandia National Laboratories , Albuquerque, New Mexico. Pulsed power Pulsed power is the science and technology of accumulating energy over
28-517: A relatively long period of time and releasing it instantly, thus increasing the instantaneous power. They can be used in some applications such as food processing, water treatment, weapon, and medical applications. Energy is typically stored within electrostatic fields ( capacitors ), magnetic fields ( inductors ), as mechanical energy (using large flywheels connected to special-purpose high-current alternators ), or as chemical energy (high-current lead-acid batteries , or explosives ). By releasing
35-486: The MAGPIE generator has focused in the past on the field of inertial confinement fusion , but has recently seen significant adaptations for studies of Laboratory Astrophysics. In particular, the study of astrophysical jets in young stellar objects (see Herbig–Haro object ) has been motivated by improved observational capabilities in the recent years. The simulation of such large-scale events has been undertaken at MAGPIE both from
42-407: The average power over one second would still be one watt, but the instantaneous peak power would be one megawatt , a million times greater. Single pulse energies as high as 100 MJ, power as high as a "few hundred terawatts" with voltages between 10 kV and 50 MV, and currents between 1 kA and 10 MA, have been achieved at least as of 2006. Railgun is one of the example usage of pulsed power and it
49-407: The stored energy over a very short interval (a process that is called energy compression), a huge amount of peak power can be delivered to a load . For example, if one joule of energy is stored within a capacitor and then evenly released to a load over one second, the average power delivered to the load would only be 1 watt. However, if all of the stored energy were released within one microsecond ,
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