Examples include the magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF) program and the cylindrical dynamic material properties program at Sandia National Laboratories, where liner experiments are conducted on the 27-MA Z facility. These results are important to various programs in pulsed-power-driven plasma physics that depend on liner implosion stability. This stability is particularly evident when contrasted with the observations from aluminum and titanium experiments. The experimental observations presented herein reveal that the plasma-vacuum interface is remarkably stable in tantalum liner ablations. This ratio is lower in refractory metals (e.g., tantalum) than in non-refractory metals (e.g., aluminum or titanium). These experiments were performed to evaluate a hypothesis that the electrothermal instability (ETI) is responsible for the seeding of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities and that the cumulative growth of ETI is primarily dependent on the material-specific ratio of critical temperature to melting temperature. Presented are the results from the liner ablation experiments conducted at 550 kA on the Michigan Accelerator for Inductive Z-Pinch Experiments. The electro-thermal stability of tantalum relative to aluminum and titanium in cylindrical liner ablation experiments at 550 kA The incorporation of this concept into the propulsion system of a spacecraft will also be discussed.
#X72789 icollections plus size driver
Estimates of the conditions needed to achieve a sufficient gain will be presented, along with a description of the driver characteristics. A magnetic nozzle may also be used, in place of the pusher-plate. However with this concept, the vehicle does not carry a magazine of pre-fabricated pulse-units. The energy liberated in this process is converted to thrust by the pusher-plate, as in the classic ORION concept. The fusion reaction serves as an ignition source for the liner, which is made out of detonable materials. The kinetic energy of the FRC is converted into thermal and magnetic-field energy, igniting a fusion bum in the magnetically confined plasma. A dense FRC plasmoid is then accelerated to high velocity (in excess of 1,000 km/s) and shot through the hole into the liner, when it has reached a given point down-range. A passive tapered liner is launched behind a vehicle, through a hole in a pusher-plate, that is connected to the vehicle by a shock-absorbing mechanism. A thermo-nuclear propulsion system, which attempts to overcome some of the problems inherent in the ORION concept, is described. In principle, this can overcome the performance limitations inherent in systems that require thermal power transfer across a material boundary, and/or multiple power conversion stages (NTR, NEP). In a fusion system energy is liberated within, and imparted directly to, the propellant. Thermo-nuclear fusion may be the key to a high Isp, high specific power (low alpha) propulsion system. Martin, Adam Eskridge, Richard Fimognari, Peter J., III. When the electron Hall parameter is large, mass ablation scales as (ωeÏ„e)-3/10, while both the energy and magnetic flux losses are reduced with a power-law asymptotic scaling (ωeÏ„e)-7/10.įusion Ignition Rocket Engine with Ballistic Ablative Lithium Liner Thermal energy in the hot plasma is lost in heating the ablated material. Magnetization suppresses the Nernst velocity and improves the magnetic flux conservation. The direction of the plasma motion is inverted, but the Nernst term still convects the magnetic field towards the liner. Mass ablation comes into play, which adds notably differences to the previous analysis. Instead of a cold solid wall acting as a heat sink, we model the liner as a cold dense plasma with low thermal conduction (that could represent the cryogenic fuel layer added on the inner surface of the liner in a high-gain MagLIF configuration). In the analysis made in the present paper, we consider a similar situation, but with the liner being treated differently. The Nernst term degraded the magnetic flux conservation, while both thermal energy and magnetic flux losses were reduced with the electron Hall parameter ωeÏ„e with a power-law asymptotic scaling (ωeÏ„e)-1/2. In previous publications, the evolution of a hot magnetized plasma in contact with a cold solid wall ( liner) was studied using the classical collisional Braginskii's plasma transport equations in one dimension. Magnetic flux conservation is degraded by the presence of gradient-driven transport processes such as thermoelectric effects (Nernst) and magnetic field diffusion. In a MagLIF scheme, the fuel is magnetized and subsonically compressed by a cylindrical liner. The understanding of energy and magnetic flux losses in a magnetized plasma medium confined by a cold wall is of great interest in the success of magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF). Mass ablation and magnetic flux losses through a magnetized plasma- liner wall interface