Performance and cost analysis of large capacitor banks using Weibull statistics and MTBF

Inertial confinement fusion projects have required increasingly larger capacitor banks. As bank size has increased, the need for high energy density capacitors has become apparent. Higher energy densities are achieved by increasing the dielectric stress while reducing life. Acceptable capacitor life is based on system mean time between failure (MTBF) for Nova, a 100 shot MTBF was deemed to be minimum. For a large population of capacitors, as in Nova, statistical analysis is required to evaluate system performance. The tradeoff between capacitor life and energy density can be characterized via Weibull statistics. A method of calculating capacitor bank reliability and capacitor bank costs based on Weibull statistics is given herein.