Investigation of magnetic reconnection and relaxation in spheromak magnetofluids: Final report, 1 September 1994-31 August 1995

Technical Report · Sun Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1996

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/485937· OSTI ID:485937

Brown, M R

Construction has been completed and initial experiments performed on a versatile new spheromak facility at Swarthmore College called the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX). Establishment of the facility was made possible in part by start-up funds provided by DOE. The facility can incorporate either one or two magnetized plasma guns of different sizes and one or two flux conservers with a flux conserver radius up to 0.3 m. The 0.6 m diameter, 1.2 m long stainless steel vacuum chamber is evacuated with cryo and sorption pumps (purchased with DOE funds) in an effort to reduce wall contamination due to pump oil. Spheromaks are be formed and sustained by up to four 10 kV, 50 kJ capacitor modules (originally used on FRX-C and obtained through DOE). Initial experiments have been performed with a single gun and a small copper flux conserver to test the system. Our initial spheromak magnetofluids are characterized by magnetic fields up to 0.5 T, diameter of 0.16 m, lifetimes of about 40 {mu}s and electron temperature about 10 eV. Large (0.5 m diameter) copper flux conservers are currently being installed in SSX. 7 figs., 1 tab.

• Research Organization: Swarthmore Coll., PA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: FG02-94ER54290
• OSTI ID: 485937
• Report Number(s): DOE/ER/54290--1; ON: DE97004429
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MAGNETIC PROPERTIES
PLASMA
PROGRESS REPORT
SPHEROMAK DEVICES