Stress Analysis Applications to Service Failures of Traveling-Wave Tubes

Abstract

By utilizing the mathematical analogy between the electrostatic fields and the elastic stress field, the electrostatic stresses in high voltage electronic device such as Traveling Wave Tubes (TWT) can be obtained from finite element technique. A new point of view about the vacuum electrical breakdown from the theory of elastic stress concentration has been proposed. The elastic stress concentration factors may be used as a good reference figure for TWT design works.