Final Manufacture and Assembly of a Modular 60 Megajoule Pulsed Homopolar Power Supply

The Center for Electromechanics at the University of Texas at Austin (CEM-UT) has contracted Parker Kinetics Designs Inc. (PKD) to manufacture and install a modular 60 megajoule pulsed homopolar generator power supply located in the Electromechanics and Energy Building at Balcones Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin. (See Figure 1) The system consists of six (6) truncated drumtype homopolar generators, each s toring 10.0 megajoules rotational kinetic energy, at a speed of 6073 RPM (636 rad/sec.). (See Figure 2) Various allowable combinations of series and parallel output connections provide system flexibility. For a full series disharge, the predicted output is 600 VDC and 1.5 million amperes. Each homopolar generator has a minimum effective capacitance of 2000 Farads with a very low internal impedance of 7.1 microohms and 112 nanohenries. The Balcones Research Center 60 MJ pulsed homopolar power supply also includes a complete set of sophisticated auxiliary equipment designed to support the six homopolar generators. A complex, highreliability instrumentation and control system is incorporated into the power supply design to safely operate and monitor the performance of the generators. The auxiliary equipment and the instrumentation, control, and data acquisition systems are described in detail in the accompanying paper entitled >Final Design of the Control and Auxiliary Systems for the Balcones 60 Mj Homopolar Pulsed Power Supply>, authored by D.J. Hildenbrand, M.A. Pichot, and J.H. Price. This paper primarily deals with the manufacture and assembly of the LO MJ homopolar generators.