The National Academy of Engineering has identified "Provide Energy from Fusion" as one of the grand challenges for engineering. Inertially confined fusion (ICF) presents a source of clean energy that is sustainable and has a potentially huge role to play in addressing concerns over energy security and global climate change. The Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) hydrodynamic instability that causes premature mixing of the capsule interface has been identified as a critical factor that limits the performance of ICF. Though the ICF problem is far more complex, predictive simulations of the hydrodynamics of shock-induced mixing is a key enabler for better design of ICF targets.
The proposed research entails high fidelity simulations of shock-induced multi-material mixing in a simple yet realistic configuration. The fast time scales of the problem limit the scope of experimental measurements and hence, numerical simulations have a critical role to play in bridging the gap between theory and experiments by allowing exploration of important aspects of the flow physics that are inaccessible to experiments. Close coordination with a laboratory experiment whose conditions are duplicated in the simulations will allow systematic validation of the computed results at large-scales. Databases on RMI driven turbulence at unprecedented spatial resolution are expected and will allow fundamental questions about turbulence physics in strongly driven transient flows to be investigated and also support development of novel sub-scale closures for variable density turbulence.
