Andreas A. Neuber, Bruce L. Freeman

This book summarizes the research effort started by the 5-year Multi Disciplinary University Research Initiative, MURI, on Explosive Driven Pulsed Power ^[1] covering the time period from March 1998 to April 2003. Research in the area of explosive pulsed power is at the present time, 2005, ongoing at the MURI partners' laboratories. The participating MURI universities and departments were "The Center for Pulsed Power and Power Electronics" at Texas Tech University, the Mechanical Engineering Department at Texas Tech University, the Explosives Research / School of Mines and Metallurgy at the University of Missouri-Rolla, UMR, and Texas A&M University. Additionally, the continuing collaboration of Texas Tech University and the University of Loughborough, UK, has resulted in Chap. 6 of this book. Texas Tech as the lead university and UMR were the original proposers, Texas A&M was added to the effort at a later time.

Magnetic flux compression generators were conceived in the early 50s, one of the fathers was Andrey D. Sacharov, who proposed transforming the energy of explosives into the energy of a magnetic field in January of 1952. His suggestions were followed in the spring of 1952 with the start of early MK-1 experiments at VNIIEF (Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russia Research Institute of Experimental Physics). Max Fowler in the United States fired his first plate generator in 1952 using the pole pieces of a magnetron for the initial magnetic field. Many countries have since then joined in the research on