Impact ICF — kinetic energy as the driver
Fusion schemes in which a macroscopic projectile, accelerated to hypervelocity, converts its kinetic energy on impact into the compression and heating of a fuel-bearing target. SCPN-ICF-IMPACT-CORE owns the device truth of the projectile_or_impact_icf configuration.
What the configuration is
Instead of light or ions, throw something: a plate or pellet launched electromagnetically, by light gas or in stages to hundreds of kilometres per second carries, in its bulk kinetic energy, megajoules per square centimetre of face. The 1979 Impact Fusion Workshop at Los Alamos worked the idea through in two geometries that its own proceedings never pair — a plane slab of fuel driven by a uranium plate, whose density rises exactly as fast as its thickness falls and which therefore gains no areal density, and a solid fuel sphere converging tenfold, which gains the square of the factor. The impact core evaluates each on what its own paper prints and says which printed numbers do not come back.
What the core owns
- the device boundary: plant and experiment truth, shot lifecycle and configuration policy for projectile-driven fusion schemes;
- launcher-and-impact semantics at device level: launcher-class declarations (electromagnetic, light-gas, staged), projectile metrology and integrity contracts, impact-geometry and timing declarations, kinetic-to-internal energy conversion declarations;
- the declared configuration: projectile mass and velocity; target radius;
- diagnostic semantics, reference frames and clock identity declarations; the CONTROL adapter specification; the registry binding (version 1.0.0) and the domain manifest.
What it explicitly excludes
- Laser-driven ICF: SCPN-ICF-LASER-CORE; beam-driven ICF: SCPN-ICF-BEAM-CORE; mechanical and liquid-liner magnetised-target fusion (slower liner compression of a magnetised plasma): SCPN-MIF-LINER-CORE.
- Solver mathematics and validation evidence (radiation hydrodynamics, radiation transport, burn physics): SCPN-Fusion-Core, until an exact surface passes the reactor family migration gate; no solver code exists in, or was copied into, the device core.
- Typed signal semantics and comparability: SCPN-Phase-Orchestrator (review-only output, never actuation). Control admission and action formation: SCPN-Control. Machine protection: independent systems retain the final veto. Portfolio presentation and gating: SCPN-Studio.
Level-0 physics and its anchor
What a flying plate carries (mass per unit face, the thickness a material needs for it, the energy the face delivers per unit area); the fuel in both geometries (absolute densities from printed ratios, mass and areal density of a slab and a sphere, the DT specific energy from the nuclear masses); where the fuel ends up (one-axis compression by mass conservation, convergent compression as the cube of a radial factor); a composed record over both schemes. Anchored on Proceedings of the Impact Fusion Workshop, LA-8000-C (1979), on file and freely published, read off pages rendered at 170 dpi: the plate's areal density 0.052 g/cm² exactly; 1.04 MJ/cm² to one unit in the last place; the compression ratio 420 the two printed end states set; the convergent target's 2.13 g/cm² against a printed 2 at its one figure. Measured: the volume truncates rather than rounds on two independent values (2.7659 printed 2.7; 2.3810 printed 2.3); a driven slab gains no areal density while a converging sphere gains the square of its factor, a factor of 1000 between them at these dimensions; the printed gas state is self-consistent to one figure (5.3 % apart), recorded and used as an anchor nowhere. Not reproduced: the convergent target's mass (0.8922 mg at the cryogenic density the volume prints elsewhere, against 0.84) and the energy of a one-gram burn (337.5 GJ against "nearly 400").
Load the plate and the sphere in the explorer →
Non-claims
- No filed source pairs the two schemes: the projectile belongs to the plane case; the paper that prints the convergent target prints no projectile for it.
- No shock is solved; the four printed states are connected by relations and an equation of state the repository does not carry, and a test asserts only that the chain rises monotonically.
- No burn-up fraction exists anywhere here: no filed source prints one and none is invented; the record carries the energy a complete burn would release, an upper bound no target reaches.
- The plate-to-fuel mass ratio is reported, not enforced; refusing on a threshold the volume never printed would be an invention.
- No value describes, approximates or validates any real machine or shot; launcher-class and fuel choices are configuration facets, not separate claims.
Capabilities and evidence
Evidence maturity computational_prototype, five implemented capabilities, each with its evidence record in VALIDATION.md: the device configuration model, the diagnostic and clock semantics model, level-0 device physics (the closed forms on this page), the device 3D model and the device CAD model. No parameter set or channel describes any real machine or diagnostic.