Tungsten wire-array Z-pinch experiments at 200 TW and 2 MJ
- Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico87185 (United States)
- Los Alamos National Laboratories, Los Alamos, New Mexico87545 (United States)
Here Z, a 60 TW/5 MJ electrical accelerator located at Sandia National Laboratories, has been used to implode tungsten wire-array Z pinches. These arrays consisted of large numbers of tungsten wires (120{endash}300) with wire diameters of 7.5 to 15 {mu}m placed in a symmetric cylindrical array. The experiments used array diameters ranging from 1.75 to 4 cm and lengths from 1 to 2 cm. A 2 cm long, 4 cm diam tungsten array consisting of 240, 7.5 {mu}m diam wires (4.1 mg mass) achieved an x-ray power of {approximately}200TW and an x-ray energy of nearly 2 MJ. Spectral data suggest an optically thick, Planckian-like radiator below 1000 eV. One surprising experimental result was the observation that the total radiated x-ray energies and x-ray powers were nearly independent of pinch length. These data are compared with two-dimensional radiation magnetohydrodynamic code calculations. {copyright} {ital 1998 American Institute of Physics.}
- OSTI ID:
- 627799
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-971103--
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Journal Name: Physics of Plasmas Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 5; ISSN PHPAEN; ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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