Simulation Study of Influence of Experimental Variations on Plasma Liners for the PLX-α Project

Simulation studies of the influence of experimental variations on the merger of supersonic plasma jets and the formation and implosion of plasma liners for the PLX-α project have been performed using the FronTier code. Simulations operate with six supersonic plasma jets with parameters closely matching the PLX-α experiment at Los Alamos. A series of simulations have been performed by randomly varying the initial mass and shot time of each jet as well randomly varying the initial mass and velocity of each jet in such a way that their kinetic energy remained constant. Simulations demonstrate the influence of experimental variations on the structure and strength of oblique shock waves, generated by the collision of supersonic jets, liner non-uniformities, averaged Mach numbers and self-implosion pressures, as well as synthetic quantities, experimentally observable by a multi-chord interferometer and a high-speed camera. The inclusion of experimental variations in simulations improve their agreement with the interferometry reading while shock-wave structures observed in simulations agree very well with images obtained by the high-speed camera.