Measurements of Magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor Instability Growth during the Implosion of Initially Solid Al Tubes Driven by the 20-MA, 100-ns Z Facility

Sinars, Daniel Brian; Slutz, Stephen A.; Herrmann, Mark; McBride, R. D.; Cuneo, M. E.; Peterson, Kyle; Vesey, R. A.; Nakhleh, Charles; Blue, B. E.; Killebrew, K. L.; Schroen, D. G.; Tomlinson, Kurt; Edens, Aaron; López, M. R.; Smith, I. C.; Shores, Jonathon; Bigman, Verle Howard; Bennett, G. R.; Atherton, Briggs W.; Savage, M. E.; Stygar, W. A.; Leifeste, G.T.; Porter, J. L.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.105.185001

Cited by 140 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…As discussed above, the beryllium liners shown in red have an aspect ratio, A R ¼ R out /DR ¼ 6 for all simulations presented in this study. Numerical simulations 4 indicated and experiments [7][8][9][10][11] have confirmed that A R ¼ 6 liners should be sufficiently robust to the RT instability. These experiments were performed with drive currents of approximately 18 MA.…”

Section: Numerical Model Of Maglif Implosionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The fuel preheating and the magnetically inhibited radial conduction reduce the required volume compression and thus the convergence needed to achieve fusion temperatures. Numerical simulations and experiments 4,[7][8][9][10][11] indicate thick walled liners with an aspect ratio (A R ¼ R outer /DR wall $ 6) should be adequately robust. Larger aspect ratios may be possible with the suppression of the electro-thermal instability, 12 but we use the conservative value A R ¼ 6 for this study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scaling magnetized liner inertial fusion on Z and future pulsed-power accelerators

et al. 2016

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The MagLIF (Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion) concept [S. A. Slutz et al., Phys. Plasmas 17, 056303 (2010)] has demonstrated fusion–relevant plasma conditions [M. R. Gomez et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 155003 (2014)] on the Z accelerator with a peak drive current of about 18 MA. We present 2D numerical simulations of the scaling of MagLIF on Z as a function of drive current, preheat energy, and applied magnetic field. The results indicate that deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion yields greater than 100 kJ could be possible on Z when all of these parameters are at the optimum values: i.e., peak current = 25 MA, deposited preheat energy = 5 kJ, and Bz = 30 T. Much higher yields have been predicted [S. A. Slutz and R. A. Vesey, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 025003 (2012)] for MagLIF driven with larger peak currents. Two high performance pulsed-power accelerators (Z300 and Z800) based on linear-transformer-driver technology have been designed [W. A. Stygar et al., Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams 18, 110401 (2015)]. The Z300 design would provide 48 MA to a MagLIF load, while Z800 would provide 65 MA. Parameterized Thevenin-equivalent circuits were used to drive a series of 1D and 2D numerical MagLIF simulations with currents ranging from what Z can deliver now to what could be achieved by these conceptual future pulsed-power accelerators. 2D simulations of simple MagLIF targets containing just gaseous DT have yields of 18 MJ for Z300 and 440 MJ for Z800. The 2D simulated yield for Z800 is increased to 7 GJ by adding a layer of frozen DT ice to the inside of the liner.

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Section: Numerical Model Of Maglif Implosionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling magnetized liner inertial fusion on Z and future pulsed-power accelerators

et al. 2016

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“…Code agreement was achieved only with the addition of an artificially azimuthally correlated initialisation. Good agreement between experiment and simulation was, however, achieved for MRT growth from a machined single mode perturbation, 11 suggesting that the poor agreement for randomly initialised liner implosions can be explained by enhanced levels of azimuthal correlation in the experiment over the simulation. This is a key because the MRT modes with the highest growth rate are fully azimuthally correlated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Instability growth for magnetized liner inertial fusion seeded by electro-thermal, electro-choric, and material strength effects

Pecover

Chittenden

2015

Physics of Plasmas

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A critical limitation of magnetically imploded systems such as magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF) [Slutz et al., Phys. Plasmas 17, 056303 (2010)] is the magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor (MRT) instability which primarily disrupts the outer surface of the liner. MagLIF-relevant experiments have showed large amplitude multi-mode MRT instability growth growing from surface roughness [McBride et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 135004 (2012)], which is only reproduced by 3D simulations using our MHD code Gorgon when an artificially azimuthally correlated initialisation is added. We have shown that the missing azimuthal correlation could be provided by a combination of the electro-thermal instability (ETI) and an "electro-choric" instability (ECI); describing, respectively, the tendency of current to correlate azimuthally early in time due to temperature dependent Ohmic heating; and an amplification of the ETI driven by density dependent resistivity around vapourisation. We developed and implemented a material strength model in Gorgon to improve simulation of the solid phase of liner implosions which, when applied to simulations exhibiting the ETI and ECI, gave a significant increase in wavelength and amplitude. Full circumference simulations of the MRT instability provided a significant improvement on previous randomly initialised results and approached agreement with experiment. V C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.

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“…Thus, the main thrust of this LDRD proposal was to study the key physics issue of liner stability. These experiments were extremely successful and resulted in several high-profile publications [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. The results of these studies are summarized in Section 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability of fusion target concepts on Z.

Sinars¹,

McBride²,

Rovang³

et al. 2012

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The key scientific issue for magnetically driven fusion concepts is the stability of the cylindrical liner surrounding the fuel. The liner is susceptible to the magnetoRayleigh-Taylor instability, which can disrupt the liner implosion and prevent it from successfully compressing and confining the fuel. We summarize an LDRD project to investigate the stability of aluminum and beryllium liner implosions on the Sandia Z pulsed power facility. Much of the work was conducted in the specific context of a new magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF) concept, and continued modeling of that concept was supported by this project. However, the liner stability data is fundamental to magnetically driven systems, and the idea of magnetizing and preheating fuel applies to any inertial confinement fusion platform. We also demonstrated prototype 10 T axial magnetic field coils, which are needed both to test the MagLIF concept and the idea of stabilizing liner implosions using magnetic fields. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe thank the many Z and Z-Beamlet operations and production teams for their excellent support of the liner stability experiments on Z that were undertaken as part of this project.We thank General Atomics for their support in developing and fabricating the liner targets fielded on the Z facility. Much of the work described here would not have been possible without the development of a beryllium machining capability in La Jolla, CA.We thank Ron Kaye (Manager, Org. 5445) for supporting the development of the Systems Integration and Test Facility in his laboratory space and for the use of Derek Lamppa and Marc Jobe to support the development of magnetic field coils.We thank Jim Puissant (Org. 1647) for supporting the magnetic field coil design and testing activities.We thank TJ Rogers (formerly Org. 1678) for designing the raised power-feed hardware for Z that is compatible with the magnetic field coils, and was tested during the "Washington" shots.We thank Dawn Flicker (Manager, Org. 1646) for supporting the collaboration between the ICF and Dynamic Materials program that enabled the "Union" experiments on Z. These experiments, while explicitly aimed at studying the equation of state of beryllium using cylindrical liners, are also relevant to ICF implosions and the techniques may ultimately benefit MagLIF.We thank the code support teams at LLNL for both LASNEX and HYDRA for helping us to advance the simulations conducted as part of this project. We also thank the support staff at numerous computing platforms at both SNL and LLNL who helped shepherd the simulations through to completion.

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Measurements of Magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor Instability Growth during the Implosion of Initially Solid Al Tubes Driven by the 20-MA, 100-ns Z Facility

Cited by 140 publications

References 17 publications

Scaling magnetized liner inertial fusion on Z and future pulsed-power accelerators

Scaling magnetized liner inertial fusion on Z and future pulsed-power accelerators

Instability growth for magnetized liner inertial fusion seeded by electro-thermal, electro-choric, and material strength effects

Stability of fusion target concepts on Z.

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