Ferromagnetic circuit breaker

Current can be transferred to the load of an inductive energy storage devic e by rapidly increasing the inductance of a circuit element connected in pa rallel with the load. The present paper suggests using a coil with a ferrom agnetic core for this purpose. In addition to the principal (toroidal) fiel d, an orthogonal (poloidal) control field is generated in the core. The res ults presented here demonstrate that under certain conditions, the magnetiz ation and therefore the inductance can be changed abruptly by this orthogon al control field. It is also shown that the switching process can be contro lled by fairly small currents. Under favorable geometric conditions, the in ductance can vary by a factor between 3 and 10. The proposed system is suit able for multiple use, since it contains no elements that are damaged durin g the switching process, as is the case with exploding conductors, and is e ffective for a low-inductance load. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1063-7850(99)02302-2].