Bursting Capacitor: high-speed video microscope imagery

This is a high-speed video footage of a failing aluminum electrolytic capacitor. The capacitor has been overloaded by a 60 V (DC) potential, due to which the electrolyte violently left the casing through the top vent. The impression on the top of the casing (the vent) did its job properly, as instead of exploding - the electrolyte left in a controlled manner. Note that this capacitor did not fail in a normal operation, instead it was overloaded on purpose. nThe first scene is shown with a 5 x speed increase, while the second shows the same footage in its native 4000 FPS sampling, saved at 15 FPS.

Read more about failing capacitors at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

The original footage was sampled 4000 FPS and subsequently post-processed by standard video editing software (speed not to scale). The native resolution of the footage was 640 x 480 px. The equipment used in making this video is a Keyence VW-9000 series high-speed video microscope.

This video was created by Dr. Gergely Takács, original idea and experiment setup was performed by József Csambál, additional assistance provided by Szilárd Izsák, Roland Koščo, Slavomír Lipár and Tomáš Volenský. The video was filmed at the Institute of Measurement and Automation, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Slovak University of Technology (STU) in Bratislava, Slovakia. (Ústav automatizácie, merania a aplikovanej informatiky; Strojnícka fakulta STU v Bratislave) Special thanks to Yoshihiro Morimoto and Keyence Inc. for lending this laboratory equipment for testing and evaluation.

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Science & Technology

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