Design of pulse transformers for isolation protection and higher speeds in the remote firing of bridge wires

The continued development of high-performance explosive pulsed power supplies has necessitated the development of high-voltage isolated x-unit systems. We have developed a circuit involving an x-unit, a step-up transformer, a pulse-forming network, a step-down transformer, and a bridge wire. With this circuit, the time to burst a single bridge wire was reduced from 0.6 ..mu..s for a direct, short x-unit connection to 0.21 ..mu..s while obtaining an x-unit-to-bridge wire isolation of greater than or equal to180 kV.