Characteristics of implosion and radiation for aluminum planar wire array z-pinch at 1.5 MA

Planar wire arrays Z pinches were carried out on Qiangguang generator (1.5MA, 100ns). Loads with varied row widths (6-24mm) and wire numbers (10-34) were employed in the experiments. The implosion dynamics of planar wire arrays has been studied. Meanwhile, the changes of the implosion time, radiation yield and power with array mass, inter-wire gap, and array width were investigated. The images of a soft X-ray camera exhibit that the trailing mass, precursor column, and R-T instability exist during the implosion phase, and when m=0 maybe accompanied with m=1, instability will rapidly develop after stagnation. The implosion trajectories show that loads will implode by the snowplow mode and about 50% of total initial array mass will participate in the final implosion. The maximum total X-ray energy is 22kJ with a power of 630GW, while the maximum K-shell yield is 3.9kJ with a power of 158GW. Experiments with different planar wire arrays show that the value of m_PD₀² (the product of line mass and squared width) is the critical factor which affects the implosion time and the X-ray products of the wire arrays. The optimum value of m_PD₀² should be in the range of 200-400μgcm and the inter-wire gap should be less than 1mm.