High-voltage pulse crushing is divided into two crushing mechanisms. One is to use the shock wave generated by the electric pulse to break the solid, which is called electric pulse hydraulic crushing; the other is to use the discharge channel to use the expansion tension of the discharge channel inside the solid to break the target. It's called electrodynamic disintegration. The two methods are introduced below.

Electric pulse hydraulic crushing
Electric pulse hydraulic fracturing uses the energy of discharge pulses to induce the explosion of a certain dielectric solution (such as water or oil), and then forms a huge shock wave on the solid surface immersed in the solution. When the shock wave exceeds the upper limit of the solid bearing capacity, it deforms into rupture. Since the compressive resistance of solids such as rocks is much greater than the tensile resistance, when the discharge electrode is placed inside the rock, the shock wave can enter the cracks in the rock and break it through tension. The discharge load of electric pulse hydraulic crushing can be made into a cylindrical shape so that it can be inserted into the borehole of the drilling equipment. It can be used in fields such as rock wall gas release and oil production increase.

The picture below is provided by the customer, using the pulse power system of Haifu Technology on experiments on transparent samples:

Conducting electrical pulse fragmentation experiments on transparent samples
Figure 1: Electric pulse fragmentation experiments on transparent samples

The dye seeps into the cracks
Figure 2: The dye penetrates into the cracks

The hole in the transparent sample is drilled with a drill, a discharge electrode is inserted into the hole and water with pink dye is injected. After the discharge, cracks are formed in the sample and the dye penetrates into the crack.

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Figure 3: Haifu Technology’s small pulse power system



No matter which breaking method is used, the necessary condition for the electric pulse to form a closed loop is to form a plasma channel. What is a plasma channel? Here is Shan Zhai's explanation: We all know that insulators can be insulated because there are no freely moving electrons, and the outermost electrons are bound by atomic nuclei, chemical bonds, etc. to form a stable structure. As long as the external electric field is strong enough, electrons can break the chemical bonds and form positively charged positive ions and negative ions with negative points. Under the action of the external electric field, these ions start to move in the opposite direction to form an electric current. This is how the ion channel established. Why is there a "wait" in front of the ion channel? Due to the conservation of charge, molecules before ionization are uncharged, so the ions formed after ionization must be equal in size and opposite in polarity. The "equal" here means equal positive and negative charges.

The formation of a plasma channel means that the medium has been broken down. Different materials have different breakdown voltages (breakdown field strength to be exact). The following figure shows the relationship between the breakdown voltage of solids, liquids, and gases and time: