A simple ablative implosion model—shell dynamics

A simple model, derived from Newton’s Second Law, for the ablative implosion of a thin spherical shell is presented. The scaling dependence of the implosion time, shell velocity, and mass loss on shell dimensions and the critical physical parameter, the ablation pressure, is derived. Finally, the model is used to examine implosion energy efficiency and to describe an interesting application, wall-recoil heating of a contained fuel gas.