A 3D, Parallel, Solution-Adaptive Model for Radiative Shocks

In this talk, a radiation hydrodynamics code for simulating radiative shocks will be described. The high-level validation problem for the code is one in which a 1 ns, 4 kJ laser pulse irradiates a Be disk, driving a shock into a Xe-filled plastic tube. The radiative precursor to the shock heats the wall of the tube, so that the there is a complex interaction among the shock driven by the ablated material from the wall, the laser driven shock, and the Be-Xe interface. The code is three-dimensional, solution-adaptive, and parallel. The radiation transport model in the current code is based on gray diffusion; work is underway to support higher-fidelity radiation transport models. The methodology used in the code and preliminary results of simulations will be presented.