FRC compression heating experiment (FRCHX) at AFRL

Over the past seven years, the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM has been working in close collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory on their field-reversed configuration (FRC) experiment, FRX-L. Through these joint efforts a second experiment has been designed and is now being assembled and tested at the AFRL. This new experiment, which is referred to as the FRC Heating Experiment (FRCHX), has the goal of not only forming a plasma in a field-reversed configuration but of also translating it into an aluminum flux conserving shell (solid liner), where it will be subsequently heated through rapid compression of the liner. The FRC formation portion of FRCHX has been designed to closely match the electrical properties of FRX-L so that FRCs of similar parameters can be formed. Likewise, the translation portion of FRCHX, which has been designed and fabricated concurrently with the new translation section of FRX-L, also closely matches that of FRX-L. The design approach being taken to compressively heat the FRC in the final portion of FRCHX relies on the experimental setup used during two earlier “deformable-contact” vacuum liner experiments that were performed with the Shiva Star Capacitor Bank. In these experiments the liner electrodes had 8-cm-diameter holes on their axes, and both tests were found to be successful in that the ends of the 10-cm diameter, 30-cm long aluminum liner stretched and maintained contact with the electrodes while the body of the liner glided radially inward to implode uniformly. This presentation focuses on the system design and integration of the first two portions of the FRCHX experiment, the FRC formation and translation sections. The measured and/or intended performance of each are discussed, along with the various magnetic and plasma diagnostics that are being fielded in both sections. The remaining tasks to be accomplished before a complete FRC formation, translation, and compression experiment can be performed are also outlined at the end.