Advanced liner performance for extended experiments in hydrodynamics and material properties

Over the last few years a new application for high performance pulsed power technology has joined the family of traditional radiation source applications. This new application uses the magnetic fields from large current pulses to implode near-solid density cylindrical liners, with very high precision, for the study of material properties and hydrodynamics in complex geometries. The 24-MJ Atlas pulsed power system, operated since September 2001 in Los Alamos, has employed high-precision liners driven with currents up to 25 MA to conduct a variety of experiments involving the production of moderate to strong shocks to study material failure and the dynamic behavior of an interface at high relative velocities and high normal pressures and the compression of targets in complex geometries to validate sophisticated hydrodynamic simulations. This paper will describe the behavior of the initial liner implosions evaluating the physical cause for the perturbation growth and will describe the later, more uniform, implosions. The paper will attempt to address the physical behaviors that lead to different behaviors in each case.