Measurement and simulation of jet mass caused by a high-aspect ratio hole perturbation

Abstract

Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) capsule performance can be negatively impacted by the presence of hydrodynamic instabilities. To perform a gas fill on an ICF capsule, current plans involve drilling a small hole and inserting a fill tube to inject the gas mixture into the capsule. This introduces a perturbation on the capsule, which can seed hydrodynamic instabilities. The small hole can cause jetting of the shell material into the gas, which might adversely affect the capsule performance. We have performed simulations and experiments to study the hydrodynamic evolution of jets from high-aspect ratio holes, such as the fill tube hole. Although simulations using cold materials overpredict the amount of mass in the jet, when a plausible amount of preheat (<1 eV) is introduced, the simulations are in better agreement with the experiment.