Measurements of energy absorbed in metal foils during their exposure to plasma jet at the Plasma Focus facility

Abstract

The work presents the results of estimating the energy absorbed in metal foils (copper, aluminium, and vanadium) during their exposure to the high-speed (>107 cm/s) plasma jets generated in a plasma focus facility. The absorbed energy was calculated under assumption that the plasma jet power is not too high, which allowed us to neglect the loss of material due to evaporation. In this case, when the foils were exposed to the single plasma jet, the amount of absorbed energy was determined using data on the mass of the molten metal layer and the ablated melt mass. The energy absorbed in the Al, Cu and V foils calculated in this way turned out to be ~6.5, 5 and 2.1 J, respectively, which is considerably less than the plasma jet energy, which is of the of the order ~100 J.