DESIGN AND MODELING OF PRECISION SOLID LINER EXPERIMENTS ON PEGASUS

Pulsed power driven solid liners may be used for a variety of physics experiments involving materials at high stresses. These include shock formation and propagation, material strain-rate effects, material melt , instability growth, and ejecta from shocked surfaces. We describe th e design and performance of a cylindrical solid liner that can attain velocities in the several mm/mu s regime, and that can be used to driv e high-stress experiments. An approximate theoretical analysis of soli d liner implosions is used to establish the basic parameters (mass, ma terials, and initial radius) of the driver. We then present one-dimens ional and two-dimensional simulations of magnetically driven, Liner im plosions which include resistive heating and elastic-plastic behavior. The two-dimensional models are used to study the effects of electrode glide planes on the liner's performance, to examine sources of pertur bations of the liner, and to assess possible effects of instability gr owth during the implosion. Finally, simulations an compared with exper imental data to show that the solid liner performed as predicted compu tationally. Experimental data indicate that the liner imploded from an initial radius of 2.4 cm to a target radius of 1.5 cm, and that it wa s concentric and cylindrical to better than the experimental resolutio n (60 mu m) at the target. The results demonstrate that a precision so lid liner can be produced for high-stress, pulsed power applications e xperiments. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.