We report on a new technique for obtaining off-Hugoniot pressure vs. density data for solid metals compressed to extreme pressure by a magnetically driven liner implosion on the Z-machine (Z) at Sandia National Laboratories. In our experiments, the liner comprises inner and outer metal tubes. The inner tube is composed of a sample material (e.g., Ta and Cu) whose compressed state is to be inferred. The outer tube is composed of Al and serves as the current carrying cathode. Another aluminum liner at much larger radius serves as the anode. A shaped current pulse quasi-isentropically compresses the sample as it implodes. The iterative method used to infer pressure vs. density requires two velocity measurements. Photonic Doppler velocimetry probes measure the implosion velocity of the free (inner) surface of the sample material and the explosion velocity of the anode free (outer) surface. These two velocities are used in conjunction with magnetohydrodynamic simulation and mathematical optimization to obtain the current driving the liner implosion, and to infer pressure and density in the sample through maximum compression. This new equation of state calibration technique is illustrated using a simulated experiment with a Cu sample. Monte Carlo uncertainty quantification of synthetic data establishes convergence criteria for experiments. Results are presented from experiments with Al/Ta, Al/Cu, and Al liners. Symmetric liner implosion with quasi-isentropic compression to peak pressure ∼1000 GPa is achieved in all cases. These experiments exhibit unexpectedly softer behavior above 200 GPa, which we conjecture is related to differences in the actual and modeled properties of aluminum.
Completion of the CASL L3 milestone THM.CFD.P7.04 provides a general purpose tabular interpolation library for material properties to support, in particular, standardized models for steam properties. The software consists of three parts, implementations of analytic steam models, a code to generate tables from those models, and an interpolation package to interface the tables to CFD codes such as Hydra-TH. Verification of the standard model is maintained through the entire train of routines. The performance of interpolation package exceeds that of freely available analytic implementation of the steam properties by over an order of magnitude.
Completion of the CASL L3 milestone THM.CFD.P6.03 provides a tabular material properties capability to the Hydra code. A tabular interpolation package used in Sandia codes was modified to support the needs of multi-phase solvers in Hydra. Use of the interface is described. The package was released to Hydra under a government use license. A dummy physics was created in Hydra to prototype use of the interpolation routines. Finally, a test using the dummy physics verifies the correct behavior of the interpolation for a test water table. 3