Calculational Evaluation of Plasma Flow Switches for the Los Alamos Foil Implosion Project

Abstract

The next system design under consideration for the Los Alamos Foil Implosion Project (Trailmaster) is projected to deliver in excess of 15 MA of electrical current produced by high-explosive driven flux compression generators to a foil load. A plasma flow switch is being investigated as the final pulse shaping step in this system. The performance of these switches is being evaluated using a wide variety of computational tools including zero-, one- and two-dimensional MHD codes and a 3-D view-factor radiation transport code. We are concerned with the effects of radiation from the switch plasma prior to switching current to the load, and the interaction of the switch plasma on existing perturbations and as a source of perturbation on the imploding load.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1989
Accession Number
ADA634786

Entities

People

  • Arthur E. Greene
  • D. L. Peterson
  • D. L. Weiss
  • R. L. Bowers
  • T. A. Oliphant

Organizations

  • Los Alamos National Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ablation
  • Abstracts
  • Aluminum
  • Capacitors
  • Dynamic Loads
  • Generators
  • Geometry
  • Implosions
  • Materials
  • Materials Laboratories
  • New Mexico
  • Radiation
  • Rayleigh Taylor Instability
  • Switches
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics.