The development of a laser-driven flyer system

This paper describes recent advances to a laser-driven flyer system. In this technique, laser-induced plasma is used to drive miniature flyer plates at velocities approaching 10 km/s. The flyers are launched from substrate-backed metal films and are typically less than 1 mm in diameter and a few microns thick. The system has found application in detonics, high-strain rate testing and micrometeorite simulation. Recent advances described here are concerned with manipulating the flyer profile and enhancing performance. A fiber-optic delivery system is used to alter the spatial intensity distribution of the launch pulse. High-speed photography was used to verify the effectiveness of this technique as illustrated by the excellent correlation between beam profile and flyer shape. A technique using bi-layered films was developed with a view to improving the energy efficiency of the system. The kinetic energy of flyers launched with the additional layer was found to be enhanced by a factor of near three