LLNL-JRNL-670442

X-ray Imaging and 3D reconstruction of

In-Flight Exploding Foil Initiator Flyers

T. M. Willey, K. Champley, R. Hodgin, L. Lauderbach,

M. Bagge-Hansen, C. May, N. Sanchez, B. J. Jensen,
A. Iverson, T. van Buuren

May 11, 2015

Journal of Applied Physics

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 X-ray Imaging and 3D Reconstruction
of In-Flight Exploding Foil Initiator Flyers

T. M. Willey1,a, K. Champley1,b,, R. Hodgin1, L. Lauderbach1, M. Bagge-

Hansen1, C. May1, N. Sanchez2, B.J. Jensen2, A. Iverson3, T. van Buuren1

1
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, 94551, USA
2
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87545, USA
3
National Security Technologies, LLC, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89193, USA

a) willey1@llnl.gov b) champley1@llnl.gov

Exploding foil initiators (EFIs), also known as slapper initiators or detonators, offer clear safety
and timing advantages over other means of initiating detonation in high explosives. This work
outlines a new capability for imaging and reconstructing three-dimensional images of operating
EFIs. Flyer size and intended velocity were chosen based on parameters of the imaging system.
The EFI metal plasma and plastic flyer traveling at 2.5 km/sec were imaged with short ~80 ps
pulses spaced 153.4 ns apart. A four-camera system acquired 4 images from successive x-ray
pulses from each shot. The first frame was prior to bridge burst, the 2nd images the flyer about
0.16 mm above the surface but edges of the foil and/or flyer are still attached to the substrate.
The 3rd frame captures the flyer in flight, while the 4th shows a completely detached flyer in a
position that is typically beyond where slappers strike initiating explosives. Multiple
acquisitions at different incident angles and advanced computed tomography reconstruction
algorithms were used to produce a 3-dimensional image of the flyer at 0.16 and 0.53 mm above
the surface. Both the x-ray images and the 3D reconstruction show a strong anisotropy in the
shape of the flyer and underlying foil parallel vs. perpendicular to the initiating current and
electrical contacts. These results provide detailed flyer morphology during the operation of the
EFI.

1
Introduction

Exploding foil initiators (EFIs) or chip slapper detonators1, 2, compared to other means of
initiating high explosives, offer superior timing and safety performance3. EFIs consist of a thin
conductive foil that is heated and vaporized by a high-voltage, high-amperage electric current.
This vaporizing metal accelerates a thin plastic flyer to several km/sec across a small (~100 µm)
gap. This flyer then strikes and shock initiates4 an explosive such as HNS or PETN. EFIs offer
enhanced safety for two main reasons: first, one can directly initiate less-sensitive high
explosives4, 5
eliminating the need for often highly sensitive and thus dangerous primary
explosives, and second, the initiator and associated electrical hazards are not in direct contact
with the explosive prior to detonation6. Slappers also offer precise timing relative to
conventional fusing options - the shots in this paper had a standard deviation timing difference at
0.92 mm above the surface of 15 ns, and further much of this is likely due to the hand-soldered
and hand-aligned bridges in the field-of-view.

To date, experimental EFI studies have generally relied on variants of velocimetry2, 7 and/or
the ability to initiate particular explosives in “go, no-go” style tests8, 9. Small ~ 1 mm length
scales coupled with ~km/s velocities have restricted high fidelity direct experimental
measurement of fundamental properties such as the actual shape of the plastic flyer, nature of the
metal plasma, and electrical contact performance. In these specific cases, modeling provides
higher-fidelity insight10-12, but models lack direct comparison to experimentally measured flyer
morphologies. The shape of the foil itself affects performance13, but how the shape of the in-
motion flyer affects initiation is unknown because techniques to experimentally measure flyer
morphology during operation have not had sufficient fidelity. This work combines state-of-the
art imaging capabilities with recent implementations of computed tomographic reconstruction
algorithms to acquire x-ray images and to generate three-dimensional snapshots of EFI
morphology during operation.

Experimental

Images were acquired at 32ID at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National
Laboratory, using the 4-camera system from the LANL IMPULSE endstation14-16. Images were

2
acquired during 24-bunch mode, which provides sub-100 ps x-ray pulses every 153.4 ns,
defining the temporal resolution of the imaging. Imaging used the 1st harmonic undulator white
beam, tuned to ~11.6 keV. The camera frames consisted of 1K x 1K images with a pixel
resolution of 1.42 µm. Images were normalized to those acquired on the same cameras right
before each shot.

EFIs were comprised of square (635 µm)2 Cu exploding bridge foils, with electrical contacts
at two opposite ends. The bridge foils were covered by Parylene C flyers17. The EFI was
initiated with 2.5 kV applied to a 0.24 µF fireset, with about 99 nH inductance and .18 Ohms
resistance in the system. These parameters were chosen to match imaging capabilities such that
3 frames of the operating EFI could be acquired. Although flyer velocity was tuned to 2.5
km/sec, images are essentially snapshots: over conservative temporal resolution of the x-ray
pulses (<100 ps) the flyer will only travel no more than 0.25 µm, which is nearly an order of
magnitude smaller than the pixel resolution. Further, at 11.6 keV, 635 µm of Parylene C has a
computed transmission of about 43%, which is optimal for imaging and computed tomography.

Results and Discussion

Figure 1 presents background-normalized x-ray images of the EFI. The top panes present
images acquired perpendicular to the current direction, or 0°, while the lower frames present
frames acquired parallel to the ignition current, here referred to as 90°. The electrical contacts
are at the top and bottom of the bridge foil in the top panes, while contacts are in- and out-of-
plane in the lower frames. The first, leftmost frames were acquired right before initiation, and
we define this as t=0. The second frames image the flyer as the top surface reaches 0.16 mm
above the surface, the third, about 0.53 mm, and the rightmost at 0.92 mm. Several features are
immediately apparent. In the 2nd frames, the flyer is still attached to the surface by the contacts
in the 0° view, and the EFI bursts more rapidly at the interface between contacts and foil. This
pre-burst evidently cuts the flyer; in all three in-flight 0° views the lateral extent is about 0.61
mm, consistent with the 0.635 mm foil size. Conversely, the parallel-to-the-current views show
no distinct boundary; rather the plastic flyer stretches away from the surface. The
exploding/vaporizing copper foil is apparent behind the Parylene C flyer, particularly in the 2nd
views. This Cu plasma has structure: in the parallel version appearing as lines in the same

3
direction as the flyer velocity, most visible in the 3rd frame. Normal to the current, these straight
lines are not as apparent but more rounded structures appear near the contact points.

Flyer velocities can be directly determined from the images and compared to photonic
Doppler velocimetry (PDV). Figure 2 presents measured PDV of an EFI initiated under identical
conditions as the imaging experiments, the calculated flyer distance above the surface, and the
temporal position of the x-ray pulses that imaged the in-flight slapper, and the estimated flyer to
surface distances based on the images. As synchrotron x-ray pulses reliably arrive in short, sub-
100 ps pulses every 153.4 ns, we can deduce flyer velocity from the images and compare this to
the PDV. Images give an average velocity of 2.41+/- 0.05 km/sec between frames 2 and 3, and
2.52+/-0.05 km/sec between frames 3 and 4. The PDV of that particular shot gives 2.44 km/sec
and 2.60 km/sec, slightly faster, but consistent with velocity derived from the images.

In addition to 0° and 90°, images on shots were acquired at 15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, and 75° to
gain further information about the flyer and to enable 3D reconstruction.18 CT reconstruction
requires a high degree of reproducibility between shots at different incident angles; these shots
were sufficiently reproducible but required alignment prior to reconstruction.18 Alignment of the
x-ray images was achieved using a custom image-processing algorithm that implements a 1-D
search-based, edge-detection scheme where the magnitude and sign of the smoothed first
derivative is employed to identify the front edge of the slapper. The orthogonal, side-to-side,
alignment of the slapper additionally required evaluation of the center symmetry axis by fitting
of the slapper front edge, the position of side edges (where contrast was sufficient) and center-of-
mass. To assist the reconstruction and using slapper symmetry, views at 105°, 120°, 135°, 150°,
and 165° were simulated using mirror images of views at 75°, 60°, 45°, 30°, and 15°
respectively. These 11 views were then used as input for the reconstruction. An iterative
reconstruction algorithm that excels reconstruction of objects from few-view data was selected to
generate three-dimensional images of the in-flight slapper. To this end, Adaptive Steepest
Descent Projection onto Convex Sets (ASDPOCS)19 was implemented in the new software
package Livermore Tomography Tools (LTT) and used to reconstruct the slapper flyer. The
LTT-reconstructed volumes were down-sampled to a resolution of about 11.3 microns, to further
reduce noise, and rendered using Avizo20. Our results represent the first application of these

4
algorithms to reconstruct 3D images of a dynamically operating ~1 mm slapper detonator
systems using ~100 ps x-ray pulses.

Figure 3 shows the rendered 3D reconstruction, particularly a ROI of the flyer itself, for the
frames at 0.16 mm and 0.53 mm above the surface, corresponding to the middle two panes of
Figure 1.18 In the left, acquired with the slapper about 0.16 mm above the surface, the square
shape of the flyer is evident in the top-down view, with differences in images along and
perpendicular to the current direction are evident with contacts clearly visible in the orthogonal
(bottom left) acquisition. The evolving shape at 0.53 mm appears to elongate perpendicular to
the current direction. Cu plasma under the flyer contains some artifacts due to the lack of precise
shot-to-shot reproducibility in structure seen in the radiographs. In this view, the contacts
continue to expand circularly outward, and the flyer has a slight curvature that has increased
compared to the 0.16 mm case. This case represents an extreme test of the new algorithms:
reconstructing an object from few-view, noisy radiographs that depend on shot-to-shot
uniformity. Given these challenges, standard filtered backprojection fails while iterative
reconstruction produces a reconstruction that shows the evolving 3D shape of the flyer at 0.16
mm and 0.53 mm above the surface.

Combining the radiograph and reconstructed images provides detailed flyer morphology with
time. At early times, the Cu plasma is accelerating the flyer, but it is still attached to the surface
by the pre-bursting contacts in one direction, and by the plastic itself in the other. The pre-burst
severs the Parylene C near the foil contact points: in the 0° views the lateral extent of the flyer
does not change appreciably and is about 0.61 mm in each of the 0.16, 0.53, and 0.92 mm views.
The curvature in this direction does evolve; in the 0.16 mm view, the flyer has a flat region that
is nearly as large as the foil. At 0.53 mm in the 0° view the flyer shape has a radius of about
0.69 mm; this radius shrinks further to 0.54 mm when the flyer is 0.92 mm above the surface.
The flyer clearly elongates in the other direction perpendicular to the current as seen in the 90°
views and in the top-down reconstructed view: the flyer is over 1 mm long at 0.53 mm above the
surface. The flyer material is accelerating both forward and laterally; in late-time views the
edges of the expanding flyer often overrun the 1.4 mm field-of-view, for example, in the final
90° view. The flyer also develops fissures at late times as seen in the rightmost 0.92 mm views in
Figure 1. The rich imaging data on EFI and flyer microstructure with time represents a new

5
opportunity to refine understanding of flyer morphology during operation of slapper initiators.
Flyer shape, curvature, Cu plasma, flyer break-up, and elongation have all been measured with
ultra-fast x-ray radiographs and the corresponding 3-D reconstruction; these parameters can now
be verifiably tuned to achieve optimal performance in EFI initiators.

Conclusions

In this paper, the EFI metal plasma and plastic flyer traveling at 2.5 km/sec were imaged with
short ~80 ps pulses spaced 153.4 ns apart. Slapper flyer velocities derived from photonic
Doppler velocimetry are consistent with velocities extracted from the images. Seven series of
images where used to reconstruct the flyer in 3D from images where the front of the flyer was
0.16 and 0.53 mm above the surface. Both the x-ray images and the 3D reconstruction show a
strong anisotropy in the shape of the flyer and underlying foil parallel vs. perpendicular to the
initiating current and electrical contacts. These results provide the first detailed flyer
morphology during the operation of the EFI and such information can now be used to verifiably
tune flyer morphology for optimal performance.

Supplementary Material

See supplemental material for a complete set of the views used for CT reconstruction, views
demonstrating shot-to-shot reproducibility, and a multimedia rendering of the flyer.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Kamel Fezza and Alex Deriy of XSD, Sector 32ID, APS, and Charles T. Owen
of LANL for experimental support, and Paul Wilkins of LLNL. This work was performed under
the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. Imaging was performed on the LANL-developed
Impulse endstation. EFI imaging was funded by LLNL LDRD-14-ERD-018. Use of the
Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of
Science by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No.
DE-AC02-06CH11357. LLNL-JRNL-670442.

6
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2, edited by M. L. Elert, W. T. Buttler, M. D. Furnish, W. W. Anderson and W. G. Proud (2009),
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207 (2015). 10.1177/1548512914557834.
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and D. E. Hooks, 18th Aps-Sccm and 24th Airapt, Pts 1-19 500, 8 (2014). 10.1088/1742-
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(2009).
18. Please see supplemental material for a complete set of images used in the CT reconstruction
(Figure S1), a demonstration of shot-to-shot reproducibility (Figure S2), and a multimedia
rendering of the reconstructed flyer (Figure S3 and the accompanying multimedia file.)
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7
Figure 1: Images acquired perpendicular to the current direction (top) and parallel to the
current direction (bottom) at 153.4 ns intervals using ~80 ps x-ray pulses.

8
Figure 2: Flyer position vs. time derived from photonic
Doppler velocimetry (PDV) for an EFI flyer under the
same ignition parameters as imaging shots. The figure
contains the PDV-derived distance traveled (blue), the
camera timing points as black bars superimposed on
the x-axis, (black), and the average distance of the front
face of the flyer from the surface in the radiographs
used for reconstruction. The error-bars represent the
minimum and maximum distances for each set of 7
views.

9
Figure 3: 3D renderings of LTT reconstructed in-flight slappers reconstructed from 7 real views each. These
correspond to the middle two columns of radiography panes of Figure 1. The slapper was traveling at
approximately 2.5 km/sec in each of these views. Axes surround each view to show orientation; the x, y, and z
axes are designated with red, green, and blue, respectively.

10
 SUPPORTING / SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION

X-ray Imaging and 3D Reconstruction

of In-Flight Exploding Foil Initiator Flyers

T. M. Willey1,a, K. Champley1,b,, R. Hodgin1, L. Lauderbach1, M. Bagge-

Hansen1, C. May1, N. Sanchez2, B.J. Jensen2, A. Iverson3, T. van Buuren1
1
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, 94551, USA
2
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, 87545, USA
3
National Security Technologies, LLC, Las Vegas, Nevada, 89193, USA
a) willey1@llnl.gov b) champley1@llnl.gov

Supplemental Figure S1: All x-ray images used for the CT reconstructions are in the middle two panes.
From left to right, the columns are 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90 degrees. Bottom to top are, as depicted in Fig.
2 of the main text, bottom: t=0. 2nd from the bottom: ~0.16 mm above the surface, at t=153.4 ns. 3rd from
the bottom: ~0.53 mm from the surface, t=306.8 ns. Top: ~0.92 mm above the surface, at t=460.2 ns.

1
 SUPPORTING / SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION

Supplemental Figure S2: Three different shots, all acquired perpendicular to the current direction. These
show shot-to-shot reproducibility. For input into reconstruction algorithms, the radiographs were
normalized and aligned to the center-of-mass of the flyer in each image.

2
 SUPPORTING/ SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION

Supplemental Figure S3: An .mpg movie as depicted above renders the 3-d flyers at ~0.16 mm above the
surface and ~0.53 mm above the surface. The .mpg movie is also in the supplemental information