Energetic Materials, Devices & 3D Printers

As a research scientist with the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech I am involved in a wide range of work with energetic materials. My current research involves the investigation of electrical properties of energetic materials. Primarily this work is focused on determining the breakdown voltage of energetic materials. This is somewhat akin to hitting these materials with a stun gun! Said differently, yes I get to play with high explosives and high voltage! Truly it does not get better than this. Wait, actually it does, most of the support components are constructed using 3D printers so we get to play with those as well!

Current investigations are centered toward making a computer controlled tester to automate the application of the voltage ramp profile used to evaluate breakdown voltages. The current effort is to develop an microcontroller based system that can be controlled wirelessly using anything from a cell phone to a computer.

The high voltage system uses resonance driven transformer to feed a Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier. The system can generate voltages ranging from 1-100kVDC which is more than supports the requirements for testing the energetic materials. An early version of the high voltage system is shown below.

Spin off investigations include the electric field characteristics of the high voltage electrodes and the transient response of the Cockcroft-Walton multiplier shown below.