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Updated: Feb 28, 2026

Blast Quantification Using Hopkinson Pressure Bars
Published on: July 5, 2016
Measurement of the shell decompression in direct-drive inertial-confinement-fusion implosions
D T Michel1, S X Hu1, A K Davis1
1Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14636, USA.
Abstract:
A series of direct-drive implosions performed on OMEGA were used to isolate the effect of an adiabat on the in-flight shell thickness. The maximum in-flight shell thickness was measured to decrease from 75±2 to 60±2μm when the adiabat of the shell was reduced from 6 to 4.5, but when decreasing the adiabat further (1.8), the shell thickness increased to 75±2μm due to the growth of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. Hydrodynamic simulations suggest that a laser imprint is the dominant seed for these nonuniformities.
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