{"id":235606,"date":"2026-04-20T22:31:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/how-tiny-voids-could-make-fusion-targets-more-stable-under-powerful-shockwaves"},"modified":"2026-04-20T22:31:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:31:24","slug":"how-tiny-voids-could-make-fusion-targets-more-stable-under-powerful-shockwaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/how-tiny-voids-could-make-fusion-targets-more-stable-under-powerful-shockwaves","title":{"rendered":"How tiny voids could make fusion targets more stable under powerful shockwaves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-tiny-voids-could-make-fusion-targets-more-stable-under-powerful-shockwaves2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Picture two materials sandwiched together. The boundary between them may appear flat, but, in reality, it is full of tiny bumps and dents. Suddenly, the materials are hit with a shockwave. If that wave hits a bump in the material interface, it slows down. If it hits a dent, it accelerates forward. This imbalance creates fast, narrow jets of material\u2014called the Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent paper, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/3wgy-sgkz\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Imperial College London and their collaborators used <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2025-09-3d-stronger-economical-ai.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">AI<\/a> to optimize and 3D printing to create a target that effectively negates the RM instability.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur target reshapes the shockwave, in both space and time, as it travels through the material,\u201d said first author Jergus Strucka, now at the European XFEL. \u201cInstead of a single shock hitting the surface, we introduce voids to break it up into a sequence of smaller pressure pulses that arrive at slightly different times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Picture two materials sandwiched together. The boundary between them may appear flat, but, in reality, it is full of tiny bumps and dents. Suddenly, the materials are hit with a shockwave. If that wave hits a bump in the material interface, it slows down. If it hits a dent, it accelerates forward. This imbalance creates [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}