Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics San Antonio, TX, USA - October 2009 Design and Development of High Voltage Scheme for a Crowbar in RF Heating Prof. Himanshu K. Patel, Deep Shah Atman Shah Mauli Thacker Electrical Engineering, Post Graduate Student Post Graduate Student, Engineer, Tech Mahindra Nirma University, Polytechnic University, Drexel University, Ltd., Pune, INDIA Ahmedabad, INDIA NewYork, USA Philadelphia, USA
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[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract— Plasma is a mixture of freely moving charged pulsed signals, one each for the trigger network of the series particles. To sustain these particles in ionic state, very high switch and the crowbar. temperature is essential. RF heating systems are utilized for obtaining high temperatures. Arching phenomenon in these The crowbar is turned ON first, shunting the current across the systems can cause enormous damage to the RF tube. Fast load. This bypass of the load leads to short-circuiting of the switching circuit breakers are used to cutoff the load from the HVPS. If this persists, it may damage the power supply. Thus, supply in cases of arcing. The crowbar interrupts the connection a combination of series switch and crowbar is generally between the high voltage power supply (HVPS) and the RF tube preferred. for a temporary period during which the series switch has to open. CIRCUIT This paper presents the design and development of Crowbar BREAKER based on fiber optic triggering for the protection of RF heating system. The importance of optical triggering and utilization of fiber optic has been justified.