A legacy of the ""megagoule committee,"" thirty years of explosive pulsed power research and development at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Conference · Fri Oct 29 00:00:00 EDT 2010

OSTI ID:1039306

Goforth, James H ^[1]; Oona, Henn ^[1]; Herrera, Dennis H ^[1]; Torres, David T ^[1]; Tasker, D G ^[1]; Meyer, R K ^[1]; Atchison, W L ^[1]; Rousculp, C L ^[1]; Reinovsky, R E ^[1]; Sheppard, M ^[1]; Turchi, P J ^[1]; Watt, R G ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory

In 1980, Los Alamos formed the 'Megajoule Committee' with the expressed goal of developing a one Megajoule plasma radiation source. The ensuing research and development has given rise to a wide variety of high explosive pulsed power accomplishments, and there is a continuous stream of work that continues to the present. A variety of flux compression generators (FCGs or generators) have been designed and tested, and a number of pulse shortening schemes have been investigated. Supporting computational tools have been developed in parallel with experiments. No fewer that six unique systems have been developed and used for experiments. This paper attempts to pull together the technical details, achievements, and wisdom amassed during the intervening thirty years, and notes how we would push for increased performance in the future.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1039306
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-10-07339; LA-UR-10-7339; TRN: US201209%%381
• Resource Relation: Conference: MG-XIII ; July 6, 2010 ; Shanghai, China
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION
CHEMICAL EXPLOSIVES
COMPRESSION
EXPLOSIVES
LANL
PERFORMANCE
PLASMA
RADIATION SOURCES