Discharge and post-explosion behaviors of electrical explosion of conductors from a single wire to planar wire array

This work deals with an experimental study of a Cu planar wire array (PWA) in air and water under the stored energy 300–1200 J. A single Cu wire is adopted as a controlled trial. Four configurations of PWA and a wire with the same mass (cross-section area) but the different specific surface areas (15–223 cm2 /g) are exploded. The transient process is analyzed using high-speed photography in combination with the results of optical emission and discharge. Discharge characteristics revealed that PWA always has a higher electric power peak, early but higher voltage peak, as well as faster vaporization and ionization process than the single-wire case. Two to three times stronger optical emission could be obtained when replacing the single-wire with PWA, indicating a higher energy density state is reached. Phenomenologically, in both air and water, single-wire load tends to develop a transverse stratified structure, while PWA is dominated by the uneven energy deposition among wires. Finally, the synchronism and uniformity of the PWA explosion are discussed.