Modeling of Beryllium-Chromium Pushered Single Shells

The Pushered Single Shell (PSS) design is an alternative ignition concept at the National Ignition Facility¹. By leveraging recent advances in target fabrication, the inner region of a Be ablator is blended with mid- or high-Z material using a graded concentration profile that decreases gradually toward the outer region of the ablator. This Mid-Z material increases the confinement time at stagnation and lowers the temperature requirement for ignition, while the graded profile substantially reduces hydrodynamic instabilities that would arise from a discrete interface.  This talk describes simulation results from a recent series of PSS experiments on graded Beryllium-Chromium capsules driven with 2-shock and 3-shock temperature profiles. We investigate sensitivity to drive, hydrodynamic instabilities, mix, as well as symmetry and fill tube perturbations. LLNL-ABS-824550

1 D. Ho, S. Maclaren, Y. Wang, http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2018.DPP.PO6.11

2 E. Dewald et al., http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP20/Session/GO11.10