An analysis of the stability of a uniform liquid fuel layer inside a spherical‐shell cryogenic inertial confinement fusion target

The effects of thickness perturbations on the stability of a uniformly thick liquid layer of a ternary deuterium–tritium mixture inside a spherical‐shell cryogenic inertial confinement fusion target are investigated. Initially, the surface tension gradient required at the liquid–vapor interface to keep the liquid fuel layer uniform is calculated directly by balancing the forces acting on the interface. This method is much faster than the trial‐and‐error method previously employed. Once the value of the surface tension coefficient is known for each cell, the transient, incompressible Navier–Stokes equations, along with the continuity equation, are solved using the volume‐of‐fluid algorithm for given perturbations. The solution gives the transient behavior of the liquid fuel layer for varying liquid layer thicknesses and different perturbation amplitudes and wavelengths.