Mitigation of the RT instability on PBFAZ implosions

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:449479

Douglas, M; Deeney, C; Spielman, R ^[1]; Roderick, N ^[2]

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1. Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
2. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Z-pinch implosions characteristic of SATURN and future PBFA-Z experiments are known to be susceptible to the Magnetohydrodynamic Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability. For a broad range of conditions, this instability can become so severe as to dramatically affect radiation properties at stagnation. Consequently, RT mitigation will have a large impact on nearly all related applications envisaged for high current, fast Z-pinches. Two-dimensional MHD calculations for a number of gas puff load configurations have been carried out using the MACH2 code. These calculations examined the RT growth for 50--70 ns implosions on SATURN. With PFBA-Z, the current rise is slower by a factor of two, requiring larger diameter loads to achieve the same velocities; these loads may be more likely to exhibit extreme RT growth. To counter possible RT growth on such loads, the stabilizing techniques listed above may be exploited. In this paper, they assess load stability on PBFA-Z using these conventional methods.

• OSTI ID: 449479
• Report Number(s): CONF-960634--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
IMPLOSIONS
LONGITUDINAL PINCH
MITIGATION
PARTICLE BEAM FUSION ACCELERATOR
PLASMA SIMULATION
RAYLEIGH-TAYLOR INSTABILITY