Search

Mix is an important issue in High Energy Density Laboratory Plasmas (HEDLP), specifically Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) implosions. In ICF, shock waves traverse fuel capsule defects and material interfaces, and due to hydrodynamic instabilities transitioning into turbulence, these shocks can initiate mix between shell and fuel, degrading yield. To this end, a series of laser-driven mix experiments has been designed for the OMEGA and NIF laser facilities to investigate the turbulent mixing of materials proceeded by reshock and shear, which initiates Richtmyer-Meshkov and\or Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities on a tracer layer. The experiments are designed to understand if the Besnard-Harlow-Rauenzahn (BHR) mix model that has been implemented in LANL's RAGE hydrodynamics code has coefficients that are properly determined for an HEDLP environment.

An indirectly-driven shock tube experiment fielded on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) was used to create a high-energy-density hydrodynamics platform at unprecedented scale. Scaling up a shear-induced mixing experiment previously fielded at OMEGA, the NIF shear platform drives 130 μm/ns shocks into a CH foam-filled shock tube (∼ 60 mg/cc) with interior dimensions of 1.5 mm diameter and 5 mm length. The pulse-shaping capabilities of the NIF are used to extend the drive for >10 ns, and the large interior tube volumes are used to isolate physics-altering edge effects from the region of interest. The scaling of the experiment to the NIF allows for considerable improvement in maximum driving time of hydrodynamics, in fidelity of physics under examination, and in diagnostic clarity. Details of the experimental platform and post-shot simulations used in the analysis of the platform-qualifying data are presented. Hydrodynamic scaling is used to compare shear data from OMEGA with that from NIF, suggesting a possible change in the dimensionality of the instability at late times from one platform to the other.