Mechanical Design and Analysis of the ZR Vacuum Insulator Stack

For approximately the past 10 years, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) has been successfully performing high energy density physics and material studies using the Z machine. The high demand for these shots has driven the need for an upgraded driver which supplies more load current, has a higher reliability, and requires less maintenance. The next generation machine, ZR, will address these needs by providing a more reliable mechanical and electrical design, increasing the load current by ~30%, and enabling a significantly higher shot rate than Z. As a consequence, however, hardware in ZR, and more specifically the insulator stack, will have to endure significantly larger static and dynamic mechanical forces and will experience them on a more frequent basis. The demand for experimental time on Z and the complexity of the experiments makes high reliability of the system crucial. This paper will examine the challenges of designing the upgraded ZR vacuum insulator stack which is capable of enduring loading that is complex and difficult to characterize.