The Voitenko compressor is a

shaped charge A shaped charge is an explosive charge shaped to form an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. Different types of shaped charges are used for various purposes such as cutting and forming metal, ini ...

adapted from its original purpose of piercing thick steel armour to the task of accelerating

shock wave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...

s. It was proposed by Anatoly Emelyanovich Voitenko (Анатолий Емельянович Войтенко), a Soviet scientist, in 1964. It slightly resembles a

wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

. The Voitenko compressor initially separates a test gas from a

with a malleable steel plate. When the shaped charge detonates, most of its energy is focused on the steel plate, driving it forward and pushing the test gas ahead of it.

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labo ...

translated this idea into a self-destroying shock tube. A

accelerated the gas in a 3-cm glass-walled tube 2 meters in length. The velocity of the resulting shock wave was a phenomenal . The apparatus exposed to the detonation was, of course, completely destroyed, but not before useful data was extracted. In a typical Voitenko compressor, a

accelerates

hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...

gas, which in turn accelerates a thin disk up to about 40 km/s. A slight modification to the Voitenko compressor concept is a super-compressed detonation, a device that uses a compressible liquid or solid fuel in the steel compression chamber instead of a traditional gas mixture. A further extension of this technology is the explosive

diamond anvil cell A diamond anvil cell (DAC) is a high-pressure device used in geology, engineering, and materials science experiments. It enables the compression of a small (sub-millimeter-sized) piece of material to extreme pressures, typically up to around 1 ...

, utilizing multiple opposed shaped-charge jets projected at a single steel-encapsulated fuel, such as

. The fuels used in these devices, along with the secondary combustion reactions and long blast impulse, produce similar conditions to those encountered in fuel-air and

thermobaric A thermobaric weapon, also called an aerosol bomb, a vacuum bomb or a fuel air explosive (FAE), is a type of explosive that uses oxygen from the surrounding air to generate a high-temperature explosion. The fuel–air explosive is one of the be ...

explosives. This method of detonation produces energies over 100 k eV (~10⁹ K temperatures), suitable not only for

nuclear fusion Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles ( neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manife ...

, but other higher-order quantum reactions as well. The UTIAS explosive-driven-implosion facility was used to produce stable, centered and focused hemispherical implosions to generate

neutron The neutron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , which has a neutral (not positive or negative) charge, and a mass slightly greater than that of a proton. Protons and neutrons constitute the nuclei of atoms. Since protons and neutrons beh ...

s from D–D reactions. The simplest and most direct method proved to be in a predetonated

stoichiometric Stoichiometry refers to the relationship between the quantities of reactants and products before, during, and following chemical reactions. Stoichiometry is founded on the law of conservation of mass where the total mass of the reactants equ ...

mixture of

deuterium Deuterium (or hydrogen-2, symbol or deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen) is one of two stable isotopes of hydrogen (the other being protium, or hydrogen-1). The nucleus of a deuterium atom, called a deuteron, contains one proton and one ...

and

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as ...

. The other successful method was using a miniature Voitenko-type compressor, where a plane diaphragm was driven by the implosion wave into a secondary small spherical cavity that contained pure

gas at one atmosphere. In brief, PETN solid explosive is used to form a hemispherical shell (3–6 mm thick) in a 20-cm diameter hemispherical cavity milled in a massive steel chamber. The remaining volume is filled with a stoichiometric mixture of ( H₂ or D₂ and O₂). This mixture is detonated by a very short, thin exploding wire located at the geometric center. The arrival of the detonation wave at the spherical surface instantly and simultaneously fires the explosive liner. The detonation wave in the explosive liner hits the metal cavity, reflects, and implodes on the preheated burnt gases, focuses at the center of the hemisphere (50 microseconds after the initiation of the exploding wire) and reflects, leaving behind a very small pocket (1 mm) of extremely high-temperature, high-pressure and high-density plasma.

References

{{reflist Nuclear fusion Soviet inventions

See also

References