Development of a confinement system for single-stage gun experiments

Over the years, there has been significant effort in coupling impact system to light sources that include the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) to use diagnostics such as proton radiography or X-ray imaging and diffraction to study matter at extremes.  The ability to confine or contain the impact event would allow the study of hazardous materials including explosives, radiological, and pyrophoric materials, for example.  The current work highlights the development of a confinement system designed specifically for use on single stage guns for impact experiments.  A description of this capability, developed for small bore guns (~12 mm bore), will be presented along with recent experimental results.  Further work to scale this to larger bore or higher performance gun systems will also be discussed.