Theoretical and experimental comparisons of Gamble 2 argon gas puff experiments

A one-dimensional radiative MHD analysis of an imploding argon gas puff plasma is performed. The calculations are set up to approximate the conditions of a series of argon gas puff experiments that were carried out on the NRL Gamble II generator. Annular gas puffs (2.5 cm diameter) are imploded with a 1.2-MA peak driving current for different initial argon mass loadings. Comparisons are made with the experimental results for implosion times, K, L-shell x-ray emission, and energy coupled from the generator to the plasma load. The purpose of these calculations is to provide a foundation from which a variety of physical phenomena which influence the power and total energy of the x-ray emission can be analyzed. Comparisons with similar experimental and theoretical results for aluminum plasmas are discussed