Overview of the Atlas project

Conference · Mon Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1997

OSTI ID:527537

Trainor, R J; Ballard, E O; Bartsch, R R ^[1]

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1. and others

Atlas is a high energy pulsed power facility under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory to perform high energy-density experiments in support of the Department of Energy`s stockpile stewardship responsibility. Its design is optimized for materials properties and hydrodynamics experiments under extreme conditions. Atlas will be operational in late-1999 and is designed to provide 100 shots per year. The Atlas capacitor bank design consists of a 36-MJ array of 240-kV Marx modules. The system is designed to deliver a peak current of 45--50 MA with a 4--5 {micro}s risetime. The Marx modules are designed to be reconfigured to a 480-kV configuration, if needed, for opening switch development. The bank is resistively damped to limit fault currents and capacitor voltage reversal. The system is configured for very low-inductance operation (total inductance {approximately} 10 nH) to rapidly implode heavy liner loads. An experimental program for testing and certifying prototype components is currently underway. For many applications the Atlas liner will be nominal 70g aluminum cylinder. Using composite inner layers and a variety of interior target designs, a wide variety of experiments in {approximately}cm{sup 3} volumes may be performed. These include shock compression experiments up to {approximately} 3 TPa (30 Mbar), quasi-adiabatic compressions up to 6-fold compression and pressures above 10 TPa, hydrodynamic instability studies in nonlinear and turbulent regimes over multi-cm propagation lengths, experiments with dense plasmas in the so-called high-gamma regime, studies of materials response at very high strains and strain rates, and materials studies in ultrahigh magnetic fields (above 10{sup 3} T).

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 527537
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--97-2434; CONF-9706113--22; ON: DE97008809
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
CAPACITIVE ENERGY STORAGE EQUIPMENT
DESIGN
IMPLOSIONS
LINERS
MATERIALS TESTING
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
TEST FACILITIES