Study of moderate-Z pinch performance relevant to high current drivers

Summary form only given, as follows. Numerical simulations have been carried out to investigate the performance of moderate-Z loads with higher current machines. In particular, the scaling of radiation emission with masses and velocities ranging from 0.5 mg/cm to 30 mg/cm, and from 30 cm/μs to 60 cm/μs respectively, have been considered. Such values are consistent with peak currents above 8 MA. The simulations which will be presented are focused on one-dimensional radiation hydrodynamic calculations where the risetime and peak power of the radiation pulse are considered to result primarily from the thermalization of kinetic energy at stagnation. To this end, the influence of electron-ion coupling and plasma opacity on radiative properties will be examined in detail. The importance of the two dimensional nature of the pinch and magnetic field effects will also be addressed for a small number of cases. The results of this study will be compared with recent experiments on the Z accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories where Titanium, Stainless Steel, and Copper arrays were used to look at scaling of K-shell emissions.