Lifetime of high power reversely switched dynistor switches

This paper presents a switch assembly based on reversely switched dynistor(RSD). The RSD-based assembly has been tested with the working voltage of 10 kV, repetition frequency of 0.2 Hz and peak current of about 107 kA. The peak power is larger than 1 GW. The transferred charge and energy per shot are about 20 C and 100 kJ, respectively, and the total experimental shot number is more than 50 000. The lifetime of RSD switch was investigated with the static volt-ampere character. The lifetime model of RSD switch under high current for long pulse application was established with numerical fitting. According to the failure criterion, the preliminarily estimated lifetime is about 107 shots.