Integrity of thin, laser-driven flyer plates

Laser-driven flyers were launched from substrate backed aluminum films. They were produced by single pulses from a Q-switched Nd:yttrium–aluminum–garnet laser, of 10 ns duration and typically up to a few hundred mJ energy, with a focused spot size of approximately 1 mm diameter. The aluminum films were between 2 and 6 μm thick and the flyers typically achieved average velocities of a few km s−1. The integrity of the flyers was studied using streak photography and microscopy of the impacted flyers. Threshold times and distances prior to plasma penetration were used as a measure of integrity and were calculated for films of different thickness, launched with various laser pulse energies.