Experimental and theoretical evaluation of surface coated exploding wires

This paper discusses the effect of surface coatings on exploding wire behavior. Three different surface coatings of different thicknesses and materials have been studied, each with a 99.99% pure silver conducting core. Experimentally, the wires are subjected to peak current densities in excess of 10(7) A/cm(2) on a microsecond time scale. High Speed intensified Charge-Coupled Device (iCCD) images. A theoretical one-dimensional finite difference model has been developed to predict wire behavior and determine the mechanism(s) responsible for the deviations in behavior induced by the presence of a surface coating. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3689855]