Two-stage aluminum wire array Z-pinch experiments on Qiangguang Facility

Two-stage aluminum wire array experiments have been carried out on Qiangguang Facility. The array consists of two parts: the top load wire array and the lower wire inverse array. The length of two parts is both 20 mm and the number of aluminum wires is 8 and 2 respectively for each part in the experiments. The results suggested that inverse array firstly corroded and exploded during the pre-pulse and the start of main pulse current. The switch time of the the lower wire inverse array is 45 ∼ 50 ns. The load array was completely vaporized with the suppression of core-corona structure and the aluminum wire core had expanded to a diameter of 17 ∼ 18 mm, which simultaneously reduced the developing speed of plasma instability as well as the trailing mass in the following imploding phase. (authors)