Calculational evaluation of plasma flow switches for the los alamos foil implosion project

The next system design under consideration for the Los Alamos Foil Implosion Project (Trailmaster) is projected to deliver in excess of 15 MA of electrical current produced by high-explosive driven flux compression generators to a foil load. A plasma flow switch is being investigated as the final pulse shaping step in this system. The performance of these switches is being evaluated using a wide variety of computational tools including zero-, one- and two-dimensional MHD codes and a 3-D view-factor radiation transport code. We are concerned with the effects of radiation from the switch plasma prior to switching current to the load, and the inter action of the switch plasma on existing perturbations and as a source of perturbation on the imploding load.