Journal
REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS
Volume 79, Issue 9, Pages -Publisher
AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1063/1.2991110
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Funding
- U. S. DOE
- Sandia National Laboratories [240985, 768225, 790791, 805234]
- United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration [DE-AC04-94AL85000]
- Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship
- KRELL Institute
- DOE/NNSA
- NPSC Fellowship
- Sandia National Laboratories
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Soft metal gaskets (indium and silver) were used to reduce contact resistance between the wire and the electrode in an aluminum wire Z pinch by more than an order of magnitude over the best weighted contact case. Clamping a gasket over a Z-pinch wire compresses the wire to the electrode with a greater normal force than possible with wire weights. Average contact resistance was reduced from the range of 100-3000 Omega (depending on wire weight mass) to 1-10 Omega with soft metal gaskets. Single wire experiments (13 mu m Al 5056) on a 16 kA, 100 kV Marx bank showed an increase in light emission (97%) and emission volume (100%) of the plasma for the reduced contact resistance cases. The measured increases in plasma volume and light emission indicate greater energy deposition in the ablated wire. Additionally, dual-wire experiments showed plasma edge effects were significantly decreased in the soft metal gasket contact case. The average height of the edge effects was reduced by 51% and the width of the edge effects was increased by 40%, thus the gasket contact case provided greater axial uniformity in the plasma expansion profile of an individual wire. c 2008 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.2991110]
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