PHELIX

The Precision, High-Energy density, Liner Implosion eXperiment (PHELIX) pulsed power driver is currently under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory. When operational PHELIX will provide 0.5-1.0 MJ of capacitively stored energy into cm size liners that will reach implosion velocities of 1-4 km/s with approximately 10-20 microsecond implosion time. Peak load currents will be in the 5-10 megamp range. To do this the machine will employ a reusable, multi-turn primary, single-turn secondary transformer to couple the 100-120 kV Marx capacitor system to the load. The transformer has been designed toward a coupling coefficient of 0.9. PHELIX is designed to be portable with only an 8 × 25 ft 2 footprint. This will allow the machine to be taken to the experiment designer's diagnostic of choice. The first such diagnostic will the LANL proton-radiography facility. There the multi-frame, high-resolution, imaging capability will be used to study hydrodynamic and material phenomena.