Microphysics of shock-grain interaction for inertial confinement fusion ablators in a fluid approach

Ablator materials used for inertial confinement fusion, such as high-density carbon (HDC) and beryllium, have grain structure which may lead to small-scale density nonuniformity and the generation of perturbations when the materials are shocked and compressed. Here, we use a combination of a linear theory of shock interaction with density nonuniformity [Velikovich et al., Phys. Plasmas 14, 072706 (2007)10.1063/1.2745809] and numerical simulations to study shock interaction with a model representation of HDC grains. While the shock-grain interaction is nonlinear, the linear theory shows some key features of the shock-grain interaction, which also hold for the (nonlinear) simulations. The postshock perturbations are made up of sonic reflections off of grain boundaries and vorticity deposition along them, with the latter dominating the perturbed energy content. The mean (per mass) postshock perturbed kinetic energy decreases with increasing grain size, but energy will be deposited at increasing spatial scale. From the perspective of the postshock perturbed energy, the detailed linear theory largely supports a proposed method [S. Davidovits et al., Phys. Plasmas 29, 112708 (2022)1070-664X10.1063/5.0107534] for deresolving the grains (in a similar grains model) that treats the grains statistically. Our simulation results highlight the influence of thermal conduction on the perturbation dynamics at grain scales.