Using over-damped resistor-inductor-capacitor circuits to synthesize an adjustable high voltage rectangular pulse

A novel method is proposed to synthesize an adjustable high voltage bipolar rectangular pulse by means of three over-damped resistor-inductor-capacitor nonsynchronous discharge circuits and the artificial current zero technology. The main advantage of the novel method is that the rise time and the flattop durations are adjustable independently. It is very suitable for the insulation test due to the output waveform being not sensitive to sample variety. A prototype was designed and tested. The results show that the prototype can output an adjustable unipolar rectangular pulse with 17 kV amplitude, 330 ns-5.45 µs flattop duration, and 110-350 ns rise time on an insulation sample.