Proton Radiography PRad

A series of experiments has been performed with PRad to study how shocked metals fail when a shock wave is reflected from a free metal surface and the resulting rarefaction wave puts the material in tension. Another series of experiments has been performed to study fragmentation. Some of the proton radiographs have been published in reference 8. 

The CCD camera contains a 720 x 720 array of fast silicon photosensors and an integrated circuit, which turns the signals from the photosensors on and off to measure the incident light in as few as 100 nanoseconds. The camera is typically operated at an aperture time of 250 to 400 nanoseconds and the exposure time is determined by the duration of the proton pulse. 

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Also during the last ten years an experimental technological revolution occurred with the development of proton radiography (PRad) at LANL and its application to explosives by John Zumbro and Eric Ferm °. 

A detonator for PBX-9502 was studied using proton radiography at the PRad facility. It consisted of a 0.4 cm radius hemisphere of PBX-9407 initiated with a bridge wire which initiated a 1.5 cm radius hemisphere of LX-07 that then initiated PBX-9502, leaving a large region of undecomposed PBX-9502. The build-up to and of detonation was modeled using the NOBEL code. A 0.5 cm thick Dural plate was located 2.7 cm from the center of the detonator. 

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