This paper presents a circuit model and an electrostatic field analysis with an approximate model of the SDM170HK MOS turn-off thyristor (MTO) fabricated by Silicon Power Corporation. The circuit model consists of five cells, each containing two bipolar junction transistors and three resistors. The turn-off feature of the MTO was simulated by inserting an array of 21 Fairchild FDS6670A MOSFET importable sub-circuit components between the cathode and the turn-on gate. The model was then used to create a four-terminal sub-circuit component representing the MTO that can be readily imported into computer-aided circuit design programs such as PSPICE and Micro-Cap. The generated static I-V characteristics and simulated switching waveforms are shown. The electrostatic field analysis was done for the maximum operating voltage of 4.5 kV using the Ansoft Maxwell 3D field simulator. Electrostatic field magnitudes that exceed the nominal air breakdown threshold of 30 kV/cm were observed surrounding the simulated turn-off gate wire, the turn-off gate ring contact, and the cathode ring contact. The resulting areas of high fields are a concern, as arc track marks have been found on the inner surface of the ceramic insulator near the internal gate connections of a failed device.

Localization of targets imbedded in a heterogeneous background medium is a common problem in seismic, ultrasonic, and electromagnetic imaging problems. The best imaging techniques make direct use of the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the array response matrix, as recent work on time-reversal acoustics has shown. Of the various imaging functionals studied, one that is representative of a preferred class is a time-domain generalization of MUSIC (MUltiple Signal Classification), which is a well-known linear subspace method normally applied only in the frequency domain. Since statistical stability is not characteristic of the frequency domain, a transform back to the time domain after first diagonalizing the array data in the frequency domain takes optimum advantage of both the time-domain stability and the frequency-domain orthogonality of the relevant eigenfunctions.

The MLS grid free rezone method, a simple, flexible finite difference method to solve general mechanics problems, especially detonation problems, is proposed in this paper. The spatial points that carry time dependent data are distributed in space in such a way that provides nearly uniform spacing of points, accurate presentation of boundaries, easy variation of resolutions and arbitrary deletion of irrelevant regions. Local finite difference operators are obtained with simple MLS differentiation. There is no specific topological or geometrical restriction with the distribution of data points. Therefore this method avoids many drawbacks of the traditional CFD methods. Because of its flexibility, it can be used to simulate a wide range of mechanics problems. Because of its simplicity, it has the potential to become a preferred method. Most traditional CFD methods, from a SPH view, can be considered as special cases of grid free methods of specific kernel functions. Such a generalization allows the development of a unified grid free CFD code that can be switched to various CFD methods by switching the kernel functions. Because of the flexibility in management and simplicity of coding, such a unified code is desired.

An induction linac is used by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to perform radiographic testing at the Flash X-ray Radiography facility. Emittance characterization is important since x-ray spot size impacts the resolution of shadow-graphs. Due to the long pulse length, high current, and beam energy, emittance measurement using Optical Transition Radiation is an attractive alternative for reasons that will be described in the text. The utility of OTR-based emittance measurement has been well demonstrated for both RF and induction linacs. We describe the time-resolved emittance characterization of an induction linac electron beam. We have refined the optical collection system for the induction linac application, and have demonstrated a new technique for probing the divergence of a subset of the beam profile. The experimental apparatus, data reduction, and conclusions will be presented. Additionally, a new scheme for characterizing the correlation between beam divergence and spatial coordinates within the beam profile will be described.

Effective management of available groundwater resources and strategies for remediation of water impacted by past nuclear testing practices depend on knowledge about the migration of radionuclides in groundwater away from the sites of the explosions. A primary concern is to assess the relative mobilities of the different radionuclide species found near sites of underground nuclear tests and to determine the concentration, extent, and speed of this movement. Ultimately the long term transport behavior of radionuclides with half-lives long enough that they will persist for decades, their interaction with groundwater, and the resulting flux of these contaminants is of paramount importance. As part of a comprehensive approach to these assessments, more than three decades of site-specific sites studies have been undertaken at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) which have focused on the means responsible for the observed or suspected movement of radionuclides away from underground nuclear tests (RNM, 1983). More recently regional and local models of groundwater flow and radionuclide transport have been developed as part of a federal and state of Nevada program to assess the long-term effects of underground nuclear testing on human health and environment (e.g., U.S. DOE/NV, 1997a; Tompson et al., 1999; Pawloski et al., 2001). Necessary …

The preparation and characterization of energetic composite materials containing nanometer-sized constituents is currently a very active and exciting area of research at laboratories around the world. Some of these efforts have produced materials that have shown very unique and important properties relative to traditional energetic materials. We have previously reported on the use of sol-gel chemical methods to prepare energetic nanocomposites. Primarily we reported on the sol-gel method to synthesize nanometer-sized ferric oxide that was combined with aluminum fuel to make pyrotechnic nanocomposites. Since then we have developed a synthetic approach that allows for the preparation of hybrid inorganic/organic energetic nanocomposites. This material has been characterized by thermal methods, energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM), N{sub 2} adsorption/description methods, and Fourier-Transform (FT-IR) spectroscopy, results of which will be discussed. According to these characterization methods the organic polymer phase fills the nanopores of the composite material, providing superb mixing of the component phases in the energetic nanocomposite. The EFTEM results provide a convenient and effective way to evaluate the intimacy of mixing between these component phases. The safe handling and preparation of energetic nanocomposites is of paramount importance to this research and we will report on studies performed to ensure such.

This study determines safety hazards associated with using a 300-mW 785-nm near-IR Raman laser for sample analysis. Most safety concerns are associated with excessive sample heating resulting from sample illumination. Thermography experiments were designed to quantitatively assess which visible surface colors heat most when exposed to the Raman laser. Temperatures achieved after illuminating 216 color patches with the unfocussed laser are presented. Figures contained in this report allow a field agent to rapidly determine the thermal hazards associated with Raman analysis of unknown colored samples. Dark colors tended to heat the most when exposed to the Raman laser. Studies were also conducted with a flammable organic solvent mixed with a near-IR absorbing dye to evaluate the magnitude of solution heating. Heating was minimal and Raman analysis was not considered a likely ignition hazard. The next series of experiments examined the tendency of propellants and military explosives, as well as mixtures of these explosives with IR-opaque dyes or matrix materials, to deflagrate upon illumination. All neat military explosives studied and most mixtures could be analyzed safely; however, an occasional mixture exhibited self-sustained deflagration, emphasizing safety hazards exist. Safety protocols include assessing the thermal consequences of sample analysis by referencing the thermography …

Extensive plastic deformation during wire drawing is commonly used to produce steel wires with very high strengths. Typically these steels are eutectoid and hypereutectoid steels and drawing strains up to 4 are used during processing. The resulting materials can have tensile strengths in excess of 4000 MPa. The evolution of microstructure and the strengthening mechanisms resulting from wire drawing have been studied for eutectoid and hypereutectoid steels. Strength has been shown to be a function of pearlite colony size, interlamellar spacing and the size of the stable dislocation cells that are produced during wire drawing. The results have been used to model the evolution of strength during wire drawing. Model predictions for the evolution of tensile strength with drawing strain show excellent agreement with data derived from a number of eutectoid and hyperectectoid steels as a function of drawing strain.

Calibration of the 470-Ohm carbon resistor gauge is desired in the low stress region up to 1 GPa. A split-Hopkinson pressure bar, drop tower apparatus, gas pressure chamber, and gas gun have been used to perform the calibration experiments. The gauge behavior at elevated temperature was also investigated by heating the resistors to 200 C at atmospheric pressure while observing the resistance change. The motivation for this calibration work arises from the desire to increase the number of data points in the low stress regime to better establish the accuracy and precision of the gauge. Details of the various calibration arrangements and the results are discussed and compared to calibration curves fit to previously published calibration data. It was found that in most cases, the data from this work fit the calibration curves fit to previously published data rather well.

This document describes the Project Plan for the development and manufacture of a Vertical Lift Machine. It is assumed by this project plan that the Vertical Lift Machine will be developed, designed, manufactured, and tested by a qualified vendor. LLNL will retain review and approval authority for each step given in this project plan. The Vertical Lift Machine is a single linear axis positioning device capable of lifting objects vertically at controlled rates and positioning them repeatedly at predetermined heights, in relation to other objects suspended from above, for high neutron multiplication experiments. Operation of the machine during the experiments is done remotely. The lift mechanism shall accommodate various platforms (tables) that support the objects to be raised. A frame will support additional subassemblies from above such that the lower subassembly can be raised close to and/or interface with those above. The structure must be stiff and motion of the table linear such that radial alignment is maintained (e.g. concentricity). The safe position for the Vertical Lift Machine is the lift mechanism fully retracted with the subassemblies fully separated. The machine shall reside in this position when not in use. It must return to this safe condition from any position …

We present our work on fast entropy coders for binary messages utilizing only bit shifts and table lookups. To minimize code table size we limit our code lengths with a novel type of variable-to-variable (VV) length code created from source word merging. We refer to these codes as merged codes. With merged codes it is possible to achieve a desired level of efficiency by adjusting the number of bits read from the source at each step. The most efficient merged codes yield a coder with an inefficiency of 0.4%, relative to the Shannon entropy, in the worst case. On one of our test systems a current implementation of coder using merged codes has a throughput of 35 Mbytes/sec.

Engineers and water resource professionals are challenged with protecting facilities from flood events within environmental resource protection, regulatory, and economic constraints. One case in point is the Arroyo Las Positas (ALP), an intermittent stream that traverses the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California. Increased runoff from post-drought rainfall, upstream development, and new perennial discharges from LLNL activities have resulted in increased dry weather flows and wetland vegetation. These new conditions have recently begun to provide improved habitat for the federally threatened California red-legged frog (Rana aurora draytonii; CRLF), but the additional vegetation diminishes the channel's drainage capacity and increases flood risk. When LLNL proposed to re-grade the channel to reestablish the 100-year flood capacity, traditional dredging practices were no longer being advocated by environmental regulatory agencies. LLNL therefore designed a desilting maintenance plan to protect LLNL facility areas from flooding, while minimizing impacts to wetland resources and habitat. The result was a combination of structural upland improvements and the ALP Five Year Maintenance Plan (Maintenance Plan), which includes phased desilting in segments so that the entire ALP is desilted after five years. A unique feature of the Maintenance Plan is the variable length of the segments designed to …

This study consists of work done in support of the U.S. delegation to the NATO SAS-023 Antipersonnel Landmine Study Group, supplemented by additional work done for the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense Antipersonnel Landmine Alternative Concept Exploration Program (Track III). It explores the battlefield utility of current antipersonnel landmines (APL) in both pure and mixed APL/antitank minefields and evaluates the value of military suggested non-materiel alternatives. The historical record is full of examples where the presence (or absence) of antipersonnel landmines made a critical difference in battle. The current generation of military thinkers and writers lack any significant combat experience employing either mixed or antipersonnel minefields, which leaves a critical gap in available expert advice for policy and decision-makers. Because of this lack of experienced-based professional military knowledge, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory analyzed the employment of antipersonnel landmines in tactical mixed minefields and in protective antipersonnel minefields. The scientific method was employed where hypotheses were generated from the tactics and doctrine of the antipersonnel landmine era and tested in a simulation laboratory. A high-resolution, U.S. Joint Forces Command combat simulation model (the Joint Conflict and Tactical Simulation--JCATS) was used as the laboratory instrument. A realistic European scenario was …

This interim change notice updates the assessment plan to refelct the current wells in the monitoring system and the current constituent list for Waste Management Area T.

A tutorial introduction is given to some important physics and current challenges in laser plasma interactions. The topics are chosen to illustrate a few of John Dawson's many pioneering contributions to the physics and modeling of plasmas. In each case, a current frontier is also briefly discussed, including the .53{micro}m option for laser fusion, kinetic inflation of instability levels, and new regimes accessed with ultra-high power lasers.

Over the past decade a new genre of laboratory astrophysics has emerged, made possible by the new high energy density (HED) experimental facilities, such as large lasers, z-pinch generators, and high current particle accelerators. (Remington, 1999; 2000; Drake, 1998; Takabe, 2001) On these facilities, macroscopic collections of matter can be created in astrophysically relevant conditions, and its collective properties measured. Examples of processes and issues that can be experimentally addressed include compressible hydrodynamic mixing, strong shock phenomena, radiative shocks, radiation flow, high Mach-number jets, complex opacities, photoionized plasmas, equations of state of highly compressed matter, and relativistic plasmas. These processes are relevant to a wide range of astrophysical phenomena, such as supernovae and supernova remnants, astrophysical jets, radiatively driven molecular clouds, accreting black holes, planetary interiors, and gamma-ray bursts. These phenomena will be discussed in the context of laboratory astrophysics experiments possible on existing and future HED facilities.

Extensive information on the distribution of islands formed during submonolayer deposition is provided by the joint probability distribution (JPD) for island sizes, s, and capture zone areas, A. A key ingredient determining the form of the JPD is the impact of each nucleation event on existing capture zone areas. Combining a realistic characterization of such spatial aspects of nucleation with a factorization ansatz for the JPD, we provide a concise rate equation formulation for the variation with island size of both the capture zone area and the island density.

We have developed the Scaled Thermal Explosion Experiment (STEX) to provide a database of reaction violence from thermal explosion for explosives of interest. Such data are needed to develop, calibrate, and validate predictive capability for thermal explosions using simulation computer codes. A cylinder of explosive 25, 50 or 100 mm in diameter, is confined in a steel cylinder with heavy end caps, and heated under controlled conditions until reaction. Reaction violence is quantified through non-contact micropower impulse radar measurements of the cylinder wall velocity and by strain gauge data at reaction onset. Here we describe the test concept, design and diagnostic recording, and report results with HMX- and RDX-based energetic materials.

The performance of Fourier transform (FT) reconstructors in large adaptive optics systems with Shack-Hartmann sensors and a deformable mirror is analyzed. FT methods, which are derived for point-based geometries, are adapted for use on the continuous systems. Analysis and simulation show how to compensate for effects such as misalignment of the deformable mirror and wavefront sensor gain. Further filtering methods to reduce noise and improve performance are presented. All these modifications can be implemented at the filtering stage, preserving the speed of FT reconstruction. Simulation of a large system shows how compensated FT methods can have equivalent or better performance to slower vector-matrix-multiply reconstructions.

Theoretical models for heating, evaporation, material flow, and stress and strain generation accompanying CO{sub 2} laser damage mitigation and surface treatment of fused silica are developed to aid understanding of scaling with process parameters. We find that lateral nonlinear heat transport is an important cooling mechanism, more significant than evaporative cooling. Scaling laws relating experiments with different set of parameters are presented. Transverse conduction, together with the increased thermal conductivity at high temperatures, allows a gentle evaporation regime at low laser intensity in which the rate can be controlled via laser fluence. For higher laser intensity, recoil momentum imparted by rapid evaporation generates pressure, which can lead to transverse flow of the melted material. Only a very thin layer can flow because viscosity increases rapidly with depth. Evaporation and flow are subject to instabilities that can impact surface quality, especially surface flatness, if large areas are processed. Also material flow can heal cracks and improve material quality. Analysis of stress indicates that maximal tensile stresses of order 0.1 GPa, comparable to the tensile strength, can be generated.

Ultra-intense laser-matter interactions provide a unique source of temporally short, broad spectrum electrons, which may be utilized in many varied applications. One such, which we are pursuing, is as part of a novel diagnostic to trace magnetic field lines in a magnetically-confined fusion device. An essential aspect of this scheme is to have a detailed characterization of the electron angular and energy distribution. To this effect we designed and constructed a compact electron spectrometer that uses permanent magnets for electron energy dispersion and over 100 scintillating fibers coupled to a 1024 x 1024 pixel CCD as the detection system. This spectrometer has electron energy coverage from 10 keV to 2 MeV. We tested the spectrometer on a high intensity (10{sup 17} to 10{sup 21} W/cm{sup 2}) short pulse (< 100 fs) laser, JanUSP, at Lawrence Livermore National laboratory using various solid targets. The details of the spectrometer and the experimental results will be reported.

This interim change notice updates the assessment plan to reflect the current wells in the monitoring system and the current constituent list for Waste Management Area S-SX.

Recent advances in solid-state modulators now permit the design of a new class of high current accelerators. These new accelerators will be able to operate in burst mode at frequencies of several MHz with unprecedented flexibility and precision in pulse format. These new modulators can drive accelerators to high average powers that far exceed those of any other technology and can be used to enable precision beam manipulations. New insulator technology combined with novel pulse forming lines and switching may enable the construction of a new type of high gradient, high current accelerator. Recent developments in these areas will be reviewed.

The DARHT accelerator will deliver several intense relativistic electron beam pulses to an x-ray conversion target during a few microseconds. Plasma from the target can cause a partial neutralization of the vacuum self-Er field resulting in an unacceptably large beam radius at the target. The Livermore group has been developing barrier foils to block the plasma from moving upstream. Positive ions accelerated upstream from the foil in the self-Ez field during a single pulse could defocus the beam. In May, 2001 LANL used a sensitive ''two foil'' experiment to search for such effects. They measured significant time dependent effects using conducting foils (1). In January, 2002, the Livermore group repeated the experiment using the ETA II accelerator. We expected to see similar effects and planned to collect data that we could model. We saw no significant effect from conducting foils unless the beam radius was small enough to damage the foil. The reason for the different results has not been explained and is still being investigated. Possibilities have to do with the longer pulse length at LANL, (60 ns compared to 40) or with the higher energy at LANL, (20 Mev compared to 5.7) We also did some tests on …