Partial Pocket Experiments for IFE Thick-Liquid Pocket Disruption and Clearing

Abstract

Thick-liquid pockets can minimize the final-focus standoff for heavy-ion inertial fusion and substantially simplify materials requirements. Scaled water experiments have now demonstrated the creation of single stationary and oscillating jets suitable for forming a variety of potential pocket geometries. Efforts are now beginning to study multiple jet interactions, particularly those that occur during pocket disruption and regeneration, including droplet generation and clearing. Initially these experiments will consider the interactions of smaller clusters of jets, creating scaled “partial” pockets. This paper presents scaling analysis and experiments to show that cartridges loaded with smokeless gunpowder can match, in scaled water-jet experiments, the impulse-induced trajectories and clearing phenomena that IFE targets would generate with molten salt jets.