Contact:

Edl Schamiloglu, 277-4423 or Michael Padilla, 277-1816

March 15, 2001

UNM receives $5 million from Department of Defense to research pulsed power

The Applied Electromagnetics group at the University of New Mexico Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has been awarded a five-year, $5 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Department of Defense (DoD). UNM is one of 48 universities serving as a lead institution in the nation receiving the grant.

Edl Schamiloglu, Gardner-Zemke professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the principal investigator for the grant, titled, “Basic Research Leading to Compact, Portable Pulsed Power.”

UNM teamed up with Karl Schoenbach of Old Dominion University, and Robert Vidmar of the University of Nevada at Reno. UNM will collaborate with various colleagues, educate and train graduate students and publish results to advance the field of pulsed power and applied electromagnetics.

The goal of the project is to research pulsed electrical properties of dielectrics (both liquid and solid) and to incorporate a new generation of high dielectric constant ceramics in the pulse forming line of pulsed power systems.

Modern day pulsed power is an area of science and engineering that emerged in the 1960s, initially in the United Kingdom and then spreading to the U.S. and former Soviet Union.

“As the name implies, the principle behind ‘pulsed power’ is to use prime power —such as the wall plug in a laboratory facility— to store electrical energy gradually over a relatively long period of time and then to release this electrical energy in a relatively short period of time —typcially in tens of nanoseconds to about one microsecond,” Schamiloglu said. “Since power is energy per unit time, by releasing a given amount of energy in very short time, one can generate very high output power pulses.”

Schamiloglu said that pulsed power systems that are typically found in universities, and in laboratories of the Department of Defense and Department of Energy tend to be fairly large facilities. “The reason for this is that the goals of those facilities were to study some particular scientific phenomenon, and the actual size of the pulsed power driver was not critical,” Schamiloglu said. “However, for future applications of pulsed power, both in the commercial and DoD sector, these pulsed power systems need to be placed on mobile platforms, whether on land, sea, or air. In this situation, the bulky laboratory facilities of today are not practical.”

He said one aspect of the research is to revisit the classical problem of electrical breakdown in liquid and solid dielectrics for a variety of pulse shapes and time behavior.

“Through a better understanding of the electrical breakdown problem, one can push the limits and design a system that is more compact and robust,” Schamiloglu said.

He said pulsed power is a critical enabling technology for areas of science and engineering research such as controlled fusion, high power lasers, and high power microwaves. The ability to develop more compact and lightweight sources of pulsed power will lead to the incorporation of advanced nonlethal weapons technology in the DoD.

Schamiloglu said that he hopes the research conducted will lead to other projects.

“Advances in basic research sponsored by the DoD lead to spin-offs that one no longer connects with the DoD,” Schamiloglu said.

“The microwave oven is one simple case in point. Although it is unlikely that the consumer will have the requirements for compact pulsed power systems with the power levels we are concerned with, one can clearly envision applications that can arise in medicine and biotechnology.

“The results of our MURI program will likely open the way for industry to manufacture compact pulsed power sources to supply the drivers for these new opportunities,” he added.

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