Phenomenological Studies for Optimizing Subsonic Underwater Discharges

Yoan Bacqueyrisses (1) , Thierry Reess (1) , Viviane Tchalla (1) , Bucur M Novac (2, 1) , Antoine Silvestre de Ferron (1)

1 SIAME - Laboratoire des Sciences de l'Ingénieur Appliquées à la Mécanique et au génie Electrique
2 Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering [Loughborough]

Powerful subsonic underwater discharges are used as a tool in various industrial applications. The aim of this article is to find the essential design parameters required for a pulsedpower system to efficiently drive such discharges. Using different capacitor banks and electrode geometries, a large number of studies were conducted in an effort to better understand the phenomenology of the discharge. Without developing a numerical model for the underwater plasma discharge, the phenomenological studies clearly demonstrated that the maximum pressure that can be generated depends on the discharge current, the distance between the electrodes, and the characteristic time of the discharge. The results of this work will allow the design of efficient pulsed-power-driven strong pressure impulse systems.

Keywords: Pulsed-power; pulsed pressure; underwater discharges

Domains: Electric power; Electronics; Chemical and Process Engineering

Yoan Bacqueyrisses, Thierry Reess, Viviane Tchalla, Bucur M Novac, Antoine Silvestre de Ferron. Phenomenological Studies for Optimizing Subsonic Underwater Discharges. IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 2021, 49 (11), pp.3615 - 3624. ⟨10.1109/tps.2021.3121025⟩. ⟨hal-03468986⟩