High Voltage Engineering

(EEE-491)
Course Teacher: Fahim Mahmud
Lecturer
Department of EEE, CUET
 Outline
• Recap of last class
• Multi-stage impulse generator (but why?)
• How does it work?
• Some practical issues
• What to do?
• Circuit analysis
• Questions
 Review of last class
• Impulse voltage and its types
• Some terminology (boring stuffs!)
• Single stage impulse generator
 Multi-stage impulse generator (but why?)
• An extended version of its single stage counterpart.
• Also known as the Marx generator.
• Sphere gap size needs to be massive for single stage super high voltage
impulse generator.
• Supply needed to charge capacitor to such high voltage is impractical.
• And how much large would the capacitor needs to be you think?!
• Additionally, corona discharge will be everywhere in our setup, in the
structure, the leads and will be difficult to suppress. It’s going to be a mess.
• Fun fact: We, the smart (!) people are now going to study something that
was proposed by scientist Marx in 1923, nearly a century ago!
Interesting….
 How does it work?
• To put it in simple terms, this so called multi-stage impulse generator just
charges a bunch of capacitors in parallel and then discharges them in
series. So you have a super high voltage at the output.
• But you can’t do this manually. That’s why we have to use our brain (or
rather use Mr. Marx’s brain) to construct the following circuit.
• R1 >> R2 typically
 How does it work? (continued…)
• When we connect a dc supply as shown in the previous slide, all the
capacitors get charged up to the source voltage. It may take a while
depending on how many capacitors (or number of stages) you have.
• Now we have points A,B,C and D at V0 voltage and points G,H,I,J and K
at ground potential.
• The first gap is spaced at such a distance which breaks when voltage across
it (or voltage across the first capacitor) is equal to the source voltage, V0.
• Upon the breakdown of G1, suddenly the polarity across 1st C1 changes,
top plate becoming zero and bottom plate becoming –V0. This means that
point H has now attained a potential of –V0.
 How does it work? (continued…)
• However, point B is still at V0, which means that the voltage across G2 is
2V0. So, it breaks down.
• This process repeats and we have 3V0, 4V0 across G3 and G4
respectively.
• Finally, we have -4*V0 at the output, which is 4 times the magnitude of the
source but of opposite polarity. A simple reconfiguration of the circuit will
result in the same polarity output as the input. (Try out yourselves!)
 Some practical issues
• In our simple explanation so far, we skipped some practical yet
complicated issues. We will briefly touch upon them now.
• We assumed that the points B, C and D maintained their voltages (V0)
during the continuous breakdown of the sphere gaps one after another.
However, this is not the case. There are some stray capacitances in the
setup.
• These stray capacitances are responsible for the discharge from points B,
C, D (and more for higher stages). Due to discharge, the voltage magnitude
at these points fall from V0 and consequently, we have lower than 2V0,
3V0 and so on across the respective gaps.
• Without getting bogged down by the details, just keep in mind that the
stray capacitance between subsequent stages is actually good while the
stray capacitance formed in the sphere gap is bad and responsible for the
discharge and lowering of the voltage at points B, C and D.
 What to do?
• Keeping the non-idealities in mind, the lowest gap, G1, needs to be slightly
smaller than G2. This will ensure G1 breaks down first and the rest will
fire one after another very fast.
• In addition to that, you may want to keep the sphere gaps on the same axis
so that ultraviolet illumination from the spark of the first gap irradiates the
other gaps, supplying necessary electrons for the spark to initiate in those
gaps when they are subjected to the overvoltage.
• You can also manually discharge the first gap to fire the rest. This way, you
can start the circuit even at a lower voltage than the sphere gap breakdown.
(But be careful not to shock yourself!)
 Circuit analysis
• When all the gaps have broken down, we can easily see that ‘n’ capacitors
are in series and n resistors (R2) are in series.
Req  nR2
C eq  C1 / n

• The high valued R1 resistors can be ignored or treated similarly as R2.

• Rd controls the wave front and since it is connected between the generator
and the load, it has to withstand the full output voltage for a short time and
therefore may take up a large space. This can be solved by distributing it
throughout the circuit, possibly within the generator circuit itself.
Circuit analysis (continued…)

The circuit above has the wave-front control resistance Rd

distributed within the generator.
In addition to that, it also outputs the same polarity voltage
as the source.
 Questions
• Suppose you have a 4-stage Marx generator with equally spaced sphere
gaps. Instead of manually triggering the first gap (G1), you triggered the
third gap (G3). What would be the output voltage? Explain.
• You have two 4-stage Marx generators, one of which has 10nF capacitors
and the other one has 100nF capacitors. Give a brief qualitative
comparison between their charging time before the sphere gaps start
breaking down.
• Suppose you have a 4-stage Marx generator with all sphere gaps being 1
mm wide and can’t be changed for some reason. Your supply has 50V
maximum which is far below air breakdown voltage. What can you do to
start your circuit? Explain briefly.
THANK YOU