Deceleration phase Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth of engineered perturbations in cylindrical implosions

ORAL

Abstract

Deceleration stage Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) is believed to be a significant cause of yield degradation in current inertial confinement fusion implosions, but experimental measurements of RTI growth in convergent geometry are lacking. Recently, we have revived a cylindrical implosion platform at the Omega laser facility to measure deceleration phase RTI growth. Perturbations are engineered on the inner surface of a 500 um long aluminum marker layer that is embedded within a plastic ablator. The targets are filled with CH foam at a density of 60 mg/cc and 300 mg/cc, allowing control of convergence from 2.5 – 6.0. Using x-ray radiography, we have measured the growth of single-mode (mode 10 or mode 20) and two-mode (mode 10 and 20) sine-wave perturbations with initial amplitudes between 2-4 microns. Measurements show growth factors up to ~15. The measurements are compared to simulations of the experiments using the LANL rad-hydro code xRAGE with a laser package. The measurements are consistent with the simulation results. The measurements will also be compared to both the Epstein linear model and the nonlinear Buoyancy-Drag model.


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Presenters

  • Sasi Palaniyappan

    Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos National Lab

Authors

  • Sasi Palaniyappan

    Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos National Lab

  • Joshua P Sauppe

    Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Lab

  • Eric Loomis

    Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Dov Shvarts

    Nuclear Research Center Negev, Israel, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, Nuclear Research Center NEGEV, Israel, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, NRCN, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Ben Gurion Univ of the Negev

  • Arijit Bose

    Massachusetts Inst of Tech-MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laboratory for Laser Energetics

  • Elad Malka

    Nuclear Research Center NEGEV, Israel, NRCN

  • Derek W Schmidt

    Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Kirk A Flippo

    Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Alex B. Zylstra

    Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Natl Lab

  • Bhuvana Srinivasan

    Virginia Tech

  • Nomita Vazirani

    Virginia Tech, Los Alamos National Lab, Virginia Tech

  • Paul A. Bradley

    Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Steven Howard Batha

    Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • John L Kline

    Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos National Lab