ALEGRA-MHD Applications to Solid Liner MTF/MIF Confinement Concepts

Recent advances in pulsed power and the ability to create long-lived stable target plasmas have made Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) an attractive alternative to Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF). We propose to use the ALEGRA code to model solid liner MTF experiments because it can simulate the requisite physics. ALEGRA is an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian multi-material, multi-physics, finite element code that emphasizes large deformations, strong shock physics, and MHD physics. ALEGRA includes resistive MHD terms that capture magnetic diffusion and Joule heating. ALEGRA presently contains two different treatments of photon radiation transport. ALEGRA is designed to run on distributed-memory parallel computers using the Single Program Multiple Data paradigm. This is done because of the need to access the enormous memories and processor speeds of massively parallel processor computers to analyze large, three-dimensional problems. Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) is the approach to fusion energy that is intermediate in parameters between magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) and inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The essential ingredients are the formation of a plasma target containing the fusion fuel embedded in a magnetic field, followed by a pulsed compression of the fuel to achieve fusion reactions during the inertial dwell time of the compression system. This proposal will provide a fully 3D model of a solid liner MTF whose ultimate goal is to have the simulation results benchmarked against the MTF experimental results of our teammate, AFRL/RDHP MTF. Enig Associates, Inc. proposes to develop fully 3D models of solid liner MTF experiments using the ALEGRA code. This can be done in ALEGRA because it is an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian multi-material finite element code that emphasizes large deformations, strong shock physics, and MHD physics.Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: Magnetized Target Fusion is an alternative to Inertial Confinement Fusion and Magnetic Confinement Fusion. These studies could provide insight that may lead to the development of an MTF reactor.