UC San Diego

Inertial confinement fusion is one of two primary approaches to the production of fusion energy for power generation. Due to the high cost of experimentation for large scale systems such as Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (Laser IFE), the ability to accurately simulate the expected performance using properly validated models is of critical importance. The evolution of the chamber environment from target injection through the generation of fusion energy is a critical issue for the success of Laser IFE. In the research presented, the output of a radiation hydrodynamics code is used as the initial condition for evolving the chamber gas dynamics up until a subsequent target injection. To perform these simulations, our group has developed a 2D/3D-Axisymmetric Navier-Stokes fluids code that includes an additional radiation source term. The work presented here has been to extend this code to include the effects of multiple gas species and higher order mechanisms such as diffusion from the Dufour and Soret effects. Validation of the numerical method is demonstrated in the case of separation of Helium and Xenon gas in a shock wave. It is also shown that the code uses reasonably accurate transport coefficients for He:Xe mixtures based on curve fits produced by the ChemKin preprocessor. Numerical simulations of the Laser IFE configuration using the augmented system track the mixing of the Xe gas in the chamber with cold Xe gas from jets on the wall. Simulations using cold He:Xe mixture jets of varying composition are also investigated