Numerical comparison between the ICF and the ICF-spherical pinch

Abstract

The spherical pinch concept is an outgrowth of the inertial confinement model. The salient feature of the spherical pinch concept is the creation of a hot plasma in the center of a sphere.(1,2) This plasma is then compressed by a strong shock wave launched from the periphery of the vessel by an imploded plasma acting as a driver. This scheme, reveals that convergence of the shock, which is the main feature of all inertial confinement schemes, is a component of the spherical pinch model. The reasons for classifying the spherical pinch as a particular ICF model and designating it as a ICF-SP are given here. The fluid mechanics and high-temperature hydrodynamics of the spherical pinch can be briefly described as an explosion within an implosion. The structure of the shock wave for such explosion within an implosion and for, an implosion alone is determined by solving numerically the governing equations of the phenomena. We present here a detailed computational comparison of the inertial confinement model and the spherical pinch in terms of density, pressure, temperature, confinement time, total accumulated number of neutrons, and time-resolved neutron flux from reactions in deuterium-tritium mixture. It is shown that temperature, confinement time, and total number of neutrons for the ICF-Spherical Pinch improve upon the classical ICF.