One-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of imploding spherical plasma liners with detailed equation-of-state modeling

TL;DR

This study improves the modeling of imploding spherical plasma liners by incorporating detailed equation-of-state models, revealing significant differences in stagnation pressures and temperatures compared to simpler models, and exploring species effects.

Contribution

It introduces detailed tabular EOS models into plasma liner simulations, showing their impact on stagnation pressures and temperatures, and compares LTE and non-LTE approaches.

Findings

Tabular EOS results in lower stagnation pressures and temperatures.

Similar results for LTE and non-LTE EOS models.

Higher atomic mass species yield higher stagnation pressures.

Abstract

This work extends the one-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic imploding spherical argon plasma liner simulations of T. J. Awe et al. [Phys. Plasmas 18, 072705 (2011)] by using a detailed tabular equation-of-state (EOS) model, whereas Awe et al. used a polytropic EOS model. Results using the tabular EOS model give lower stagnation pressures by a factor of 3.9-8.6 and lower peak ion temperatures compared to the polytropic EOS results. Both local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) and non-LTE EOS models were used in this work, giving similar results on stagnation pressure. The lower stagnation pressures using a tabular EOS model are attributed to a reduction in the liner's ability to compress arising from the energy sink introduced by ionization and electron excitation, which are not accounted for in a polytropic EOS model. Variation of the plasma liner species for the same initial liner geometry, mass density, and velocity was also explored using the LTE tabular EOS model, showing that the highest stagnation pressure is achieved with the highest atomic mass species for the constraints imposed.