Exploration of ramp wave analysis methods through the double-wide stripline platform

Experiments conducted at facilities such as SNL’s Z pulsed power machine and LLNL’s National Ignition Facility produce high-precision off-Hugoniot data to multi-megabar pressures. Despite typically employing different analysis methods, cross-platform comparisons between the facilities generally result in consistency for well-behaved materials that do not exhibit large first-order phase transformations. However, questions remain about how well the different analysis methods and their approximations perform in the presence of phase transformations exhibiting large time-dependent behaviors. Towards this end, a new platform on Z deemed the double-wide stripline experiment was developed. The new approach enables the application of all known ramp analysis methods on a single experiment, something not possible on previous Z target designs. An initial experiment shocklessly compressing iron to ~75 GPa suggests there are measurable differences between the analysis methods when interpreting the well-known alpha-epsilon phase transformation.