Author: Paul, M.
Paper Title Page
MOCOBAB04 The Advanced Radiographic Capability, a Major Upgrade of the Computer Controls for the National Ignition Facility 39
 
  • G.K. Brunton, A.I. Barnes, G.A. Bowers, C.M. Estes, J.M. Fisher, B.T. Fishler, S.M. Glenn, B. Horowitz, L.M. Kegelmeyer, L.J. Lagin, A.P. Ludwigsen, D.T. Maloy, C.D. Marshall, D.G. Mathisen, J.T. Matone, D.L. McGuigan, M. Paul, R.S. Roberts, G.L. Tietbohl, K.C. Wilhelmsen
    LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
 
  Funding: This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. #LLNL-ABS-633793
The Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) currently under development for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) will provide short (1-50 picoseconds) ultra high power (>1 Petawatt) laser pulses used for a variety of diagnostic purposes on NIF ranging from a high energy x-ray pulse source for backlighter imaging to an experimental platform for fast-ignition. A single NIF Quad (4 beams) is being upgraded to support experimentally driven, autonomous operations using either ARC or existing NIF pulses. Using its own seed oscillator, ARC generates short, wide bandwidth pulses that propagate down the existing NIF beamlines for amplification before being redirected through large aperture gratings that perform chirped pulse compression, generating a series of high-intensity pulses within the target chamber. This significant effort to integrate the ARC adds 40% additional control points to the existing NIF Quad and will be deployed in several phases over the coming year. This talk discusses some new unique ARC software controls used for short pulse operation on NIF and integration techniques being used to expedite deployment of this new diagnostic.
 
slides icon Slides MOCOBAB04 [3.279 MB]  
 
MOPPC038 Rapid Software Prototyping into Large Scale Controls Systems 166
 
  • B.T. Fishler, M.W. Bowers, G.K. Brunton, S. Cohen, A.D. Conder, J.-M.G. Di Nicola, J. Heebner, J.T. Matone, M. Paul, M. A. Rever, M.J. Shaw, E.M. Tse
    LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
 
  Funding: This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. #LLNL-ABS-632892
The programmable spatial shaper (PSS) within the National Ignition Facility (NIF) reduces energy on isolated optic flaws in order to lower the optics maintenance costs. This will be accomplished by using a closed-loop system for determining the optimal liquid-crystal-based spatial light pattern for beamshaping and placement of variable transmission blockers. A stand-alone prototype was developed and successfully run in a lab environment as well as on a single quad of NIF lasers following a temporary hardware reconfiguration required to support the test. Several challenges exist in directly integrating the C-based PSS engine written by an independent team into the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) for proof on concept on all 48 NIF laser quads. ICCS is a large-scale data-driven distributed control system written primarily in Java using CORBA to interact with +60K control points. The project plan and software design needed to specifically address the engine interface specification, configuration management, reversion plan for the existing 0% transmission blocker capability, and a multi-phase integration and demonstration schedule.
 
poster icon Poster MOPPC038 [2.410 MB]