Abstract
Crowbar system is usually applied to a pulsed power system in which a capacitor bank is discharged into a load. This provides a free wheeling path for the load current and prevents the capacitor from recharging due to a reverse voltage. Usually diodes have been used as a crowbar switch, but it is not a practical system because the cost of the diodes goes up enormously with increasing the system voltage and current. This paper presents a novel protection scheme of a charging and discharging system of a 300 kJ capacitor bank using a low-cost crowbar system which consists of a crowbar switch and resistors. Triggered vacuum switch(TVS) was used for a crowbar switch, and Rogowski coil was used to determine a trigger time of TVS. When this crowbar system is applied to our pulsed power system which consists of capacitor bank($123muF$), inductor() for forming a pulse, load resistor$(100 m\Omega)$, and a closing switch, instantaneous reversal voltage of capacitor bank could be limited less than 1.8 ㎸ until capacitor bank was charred to 17 ㎸.
