Compact toroid dynamics in the Compact Toroid Injection Experiment

Work on the acceleration of a compact toroid plasma configuration between coaxial electrodes is reported. In the experiment the maximum poloidal field component and the full width at half maximum of the poloidal field are shown to increase and decrease with the accelerator voltage, respectively. The velocity of the compact toroid is shown to increase with accelerator voltage and then saturate as the accelerator voltage is increased above approximately 11 kV. The saturation in the velocity and field components of the compact toroid is due to crowbarring of the accelerator insulator. The crowbarring of the insulator is consistent with the onset of the 'blowby' effect, which is the most likely triggering source.