Pulsed Power Hydrodynamics: Atlas results and future perspectives

Pulsed Power Hydrodynamics (PPH) is a new application of low-impedance, pulsed power technology to the study of complex hydrodynamics, instabilities, turbulence, and material properties in a highly precise, controllable environment at the extremes of pressure and material velocity. The Atlas facility, designed and built by Los Alamos, is the world’s first, and only, laboratory pulsed power system designed specifically to explore this relatively new family of pulsed power applications. Constructed in the year 2000 and commissioned in August 2001, Atlas is a 24-MJ high-performance capacitor bank delivering currents up to 30-Megamperes with a rise time of 5 to 6-μsec. The high-precision, cylindrically imploding liner is the tool most frequently used to convert electromagnetic energy into the hydrodynamic (particle kinetic) energy needed to drive strong shocks, quasi-isentropic compression, or large volume, adiabatic compression for the experiments. At typical parameters, a 30-gr, 1-mm-thick liner with an initial radius of 5-cm, and an intermediate current of 20-MA can be accelerated to 7.5-km/sec producing megabar shocks in medium density targets. Velocities up to 20-km/sec and pressures ≫20-Mbar in high density targets are possible.