Comparison of electrical explosions of spherical wire arrays in water and glycerol on different timescales

Abstract

Results of underwater electrical explosions of spherical wire arrays in water and glycerol on the sub-microsecond timescale are presented and compared to those obtained on the microsecond timescale [Rososhek et al., Phys. Plasmas 24, 122705 (2017)]. The time-of-flight of the converging shockwave was found to be approximately the same, despite almost three times faster energy density deposition into the exploding wires for sub-microsecond timescale explosions. This phenomenon was reproduced by numerical modeling, which showed that the exploding wires' expansion on both timescales results in almost identical radii when the convergence of the shockwave becomes self-similar. Thus, to increase the shockwave convergence velocity and consequently, the parameters of the compressed water near the shockwave implosion origin, instead of increasing the energy deposition rate, one must increase the initially stored energy.