Design Approaches for the Bed of Nails Technique*

A series of ramp loading experiments were conducted to validate and demonstrate the tailorable nature of the bed of nails (BON) flyer technique on gas guns. Intent is to develop a platform analogous to techniques commonly used by pulsed power platforms for ramp loading, where a desired ramp structure can be imparted via a BON flyer. Prior to experiments, structure of the nails in the BON flyer were optimized using simulations. Simulations assumed a polylactic acid flyer and a LiF window stack.  A desired ramp structure in LiF was used as an optimization criterion, and the nail profile was iterated until wave dynamics at a tracer point satisfied the desired conditions. Experiments then impacted a BON flyer with the optimized nail structure into the LiF stack. Wave development was measured as a function of distance using interferometry techniques. Results were compared between experiments and simulations to determine the fidelity of the optimization platform for designing ramp loading experiments on gas guns.