ADVANCEMENTS IN CAPSULE SURFACE DEFECT CHARACTERIZATION

CH capsules, produced through glow discharge plasma coating, routinely suffer front surface defects including domes with gradually sloping sides and dust particles with sharp edges. Surface defects seed instabilities during implosion experiments on the National Ignition Facility and lead to radial jets, which increase mixing at the center of the implosion hindering the shell compression. Avoiding such defects requires characterizing the entire shell surface. In addition, the global position of the defects must be recorded in order to coordinate shot results with the initial surface perturbations. Further work was done to enable side-by-side comparison with optically acquired images to aid in capsule surface inspection throughout the capsule production process.