Effects of interwire gap and initial load diameter on long implosion time aluminum Z-pinches on Saturn

Abstract

Summary form only given, as follows. Experiments to study aluminum K-shell emissions from long implosion time Z-pinches have been performed on the 8-MA Saturn accelerator. The experiments, designed to investigate the effects of initial load diameter and wire number on the Al K-shell radiation, were motivated in part by the need to understand the consequences of longer implosion time Z-pinch drivers. Typically, most pulsed power Z-pinch drivers have implosion times of 50-100 ns; Saturn in the long pulse mode can produce implosion times of 130-200 ns. In the wire number experiments, the initial load diameter was held constant at 30 mm, the mass was fixed near 620 /spl mu/g/cm (for an implosion time near 165 ns), and the number of wires in the array was varied from 32 to 282. Yields greater than 60 kJ were measured, and variations in the FWHM and risetime clearly show the interwire gap spacing where wire merger occurs. In a separate series of experiments, the initial load diameter was varied from 32 mm to 50 mm, with the implosion time also fixed near 165 ns. Al K-shell yields up to 60 kJ were measured, with the largest diameter loads producing the highest yields. These results will he compared to calculations, Haines' wire merger model, and with short implosion time Al results on Saturn.