Customer Reviews

Introduction To High Power Pulse Technology (Advanced Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)

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The good: This book covers many diverse aspects of pulsed power technology, including insulation, switching, pulse generators, and diagnostics. Also, it is a decent quick-reference for formulas and material parameters (e.g., bulk breakdown strength of materials). Finally, it's a lot cheaper/easier to find than the book by Mesyats, the MIT Radiation Lab report Vol. 5, and "J.C. Martin on Pulsed Power."

The bad: This book is not very well written or organized in general. For example, I have never seen a more muddled and confusing explanation of Blumlein operation. Also, the explanation of Marx generator operation (e.g., effect of stray capacitance) is not clear either. These are just specific examples of exposition that is just generally not clear. Also, the authors cite Chinese literature a just bit too often, which (1) is not very accessible, and (2) is probably not as important as the IEEE conference proceedings.

If you want to know only about PFLs, PFNs, and impulse generators, I would strongly suggest "Transient Electronics" by P. W. Smith over this book. If you need to know something about switching and diagnostics, then maybe this book will suffice. I would not use this as your only source of pulsed power information.

I have been involved in pulse power work for 20 years and I am really happy to read a book of such a detailed and simple explanation of complicated high power pulse power switches which is not available anywhere else fantastic book for the pulse power maniac.