Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2020) 135: 50
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-019-00048-5

Regular Article

Effects of water states on the process of underwater electrical wire explosion under micro-second timescale pulsed discharge

¹ School of Physics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China
² Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization, Beijing, 100031, China
³ Systems Engineering Research Institute, Beijing, 100094, China
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

^* e-mail: r.han@bit.edu.cn

Received: 5 June 2019
Accepted: 30 September 2019
Published online: 13 January 2020

Abstract

This paper studied the influence of water parameters on the behaviour of an electrical wire explosion. In the experiments, a Cu wire of four sizes was exploded in water medium with different conductivity, hydrostatic pressure, and temperature. Under three typical discharge types, the electrical characteristics, shock wave, and optical emission phenomena were obtained and analysed. It has been found that the ambient medium changed the wire explosion process via adjusting the energy deposition or suppressing the later cavity expansion. Furthermore, wire explosion and its accompanied phenomena could be regulated based on the shunt effect. Finally, the mechanisms of the influence of water medium on a water gap breakdown and wire explosion were compared, and possible applications discussed.