Current Amplification by Flux Compression on X-Ray Simulators

Summary form only given. Novel "inside-out" flux-compression cartridges installed on the Hawk pulsed power test facility at NRL delivered up to 53% more electrical energy to a 1-nH load than could be achieved without them. The cartridges amplified the 760-kA current of Hawk up to about 940 kA. The "inside-out" cartridge is similar in concept to a coaxial sweeping-wave magnetocumulative generator driven by high explosives (HE). The "inside-out" flux-compression cartridge is passive, however, using the high current of the pulsed-power source itself, rather than HE, to drive a plasma armature radially outwards and compress the magnetic flux density in a load. The plasma armatures, produced from 5-cm-long wire arrays, were tried in both "inside-out" and imploding ("outside-in") configurations. New methods were used to suppress the Rayleigh-Taylor instability on the armatures and to mitigate the effects of precursor plasmas ablated from the wire arrays early in the pulses. Projections based on these results and our edifice model of flux-compression-cartridge performance suggest substantially higher K-shell yields, particularly for high-Z loads, should be achievable on Decade and other X-ray simulators by using this flux-compression technology