Development and Characterization of a Two-Stage Coaxial Plasma Gun

This study investigates the design and performance of a two-stage coaxial plasma gun (CPG) using a low-energy pulsed power system (40 J). The single stage and two staged guns were tested with varying interstage timing delays to examine and compare plasma jet formation and acceleration. A modified snowplow model was used to compare to the experimentally measured velocity. Diagnostics including high speed imaging, Langmuir probes for density and temperature measurements, B-dot probes for magnetic field evolution, and photodiodes for velocity measurements were employed to characterize the plasma. Results for the two stage CPG show that plasma sheath acceleration increased by 3 km/s compared to first stage. The peak temperature of 53 eV and density of 1.5 × 1019 was observed at 30 us interstage delay.