Atlas Pulse Power

Atlas stores up to 24 MJ of electrical energy (in ~30 seconds) in its 96 capacitor banks (4 in each brown box shown above) and delivers up to 30 MA of current, with risetime of 4 –6 microseconds, to the target in the center chamber—more current than any other fast capacitor bank in the world. The electrical current produces a magnetic field outside the liner which, with high drive efficiency, achieves very uniform, repeatable, liner implosions at velocities up to 10 km/sec. Atlas was designed and built by and then operated at LANL until 2002. Since June 2005, it has been operated at the Nevada Test Site.

During an Atlas “shot” electrical current is released from the capacitor banks down the transmission lines (vertical light-blue plates) and into the target chamber where the current (purple arrows) implodes a liner (outer cylinder). The fast-moving liner impacts an individually designed experimental target (inner cylinder, in this case). One target design accesses regions of strain, amount of deformation a material experiences, and strain rate, speed with which it is deformed, not attainable by any other pulsed-power machine—providing data in material-deformation regions of pressing interest to materials-science researchers and simulation code developers.

With other Atlas target designs, we study material failure and instabilities, the dynamic behavior of interfaces at high relative velocities and high normal pressures, the formation and behavior of damaged-surface material, and the compression of targets in complex geometries to validate hydrodynamic simulations. Atlas experiments use shadowgraphic and medium-energy radiographic imaging. Velocity interferometry for any reflector (VISAR) and related techniques continuously track surface motion.