Browsing by Author "Donoso Tapia, Luis Alberto"

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    Numerical simulations of wire array Z-pinches under variations of global magnetic fields
    (2017) Donoso Tapia, Luis Alberto; Veloso Espinosa, Felipe Eduardo; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Facultad de Física
    During the last five years a lot of work has been done with the computational code GORGON [1,2] to simulate the dynamics of transient plasmas. The main work has been focused on studying plasmas in different configurations of wire arrays.These configurations include conical arrays [3,4,5], asymmetrical cylindrical arrays [6].This thesis focuses on two primary areas. First, how does spatial resolution affect the reliability of observed simulation results? This was studied by simulating conical wire array Z-pinches with varying resolutions. Second, the dynamics of Z pinch plasmas generated by asymmetrical wire arrays are examined. This causes the magnetic field topology to become asymmetrical, this causing the plasma to move away from the geometrical center [6]. Regarding the conical arrays studied in this work, a low electronic density region was initially observed, which was located between two high density regions, similar to what has been observed in stellar phenomena like the Herbig-Haro objects [7]. However, subsequent simulations, with resolution increased by a factor of 2,5,have disproved this supposition.The second main aspect of this work shows how undermassed aluminium wire configurations can be used for accurate control of plasma dynamics, by modifying the governing magnetic field topology of the system. This leads to an acceptable method for controlling the direction and velocity of the plasma precursor within a time period similar to the associated pulsed power generator rise time [6,8,9].