Rayleigh-Taylor mix experiment on Pegasus

The Rayleigh-Taylor Mix (RTMIX) project will attempt to diagnose and understand the growth of a mixing layer at the interface between an imploding metal liner and a polystyrene foam core in a series of pulsed power experiments on the Pegasus capacitor bank. Understanding the effects of material strength will be an important part of the study. During the initial phase of the implosion, the liner/foam interface is Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) stable; however, as the foam is compressed, it decelerates the liner causing it to bounce and to go RT unstable. In this paper, we report 1D and 2D MHD simulations and preliminary results from the first experiment in the series.