Experiments and Simulations on Magnetically Driven Implosions in High Repetition Rate Dense Plasma Focus

Results will be shown on coordinated experiments and MHD simulations on magnetically driven implosions, with an emphasis on current diffusion and heat transport. Experiments are run at a Mather-type dense plasma focus (DPF-3, Vc: 20 kV, Ip: 480 kA, E: 5.8 kJ). Typical experiments are run at 300 kA and 0.33 Hz repetition rate with different gas loads (Ar, Ne, and He) at pressures of $\sim$ 1-3 Torr, usually gathering 1000 shots per day. Simulations are run at a 96-core HP blade server cluster using 3GHz processors with 4GB RAM per node.Preliminary results show axial and radial phase plasma sheath velocity of $\sim$ 1x105 m/s. These are in agreement with the snow-plough model of DPFs. Peak magnetic field of $\sim$ 1 Tesla in the radial compression phase are measured. Electron densities on the order of 1018 cm$^{-3}$ anticipated. Comparison between 2D and 3D models with empirical results show a good agreement in the axial and radial phase.