Double-shell (DS) targets (Amendt, P. A. et al., 2002) offer a complementary approach to the cryogenic baseline design (Lindl, J. et al., 2004) for achieving ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Among the expected benefits are the ease of room temperature preparation and fielding, the potential for lower laser backscatter and the reduced need for careful shock timing. These benefits are offset, however, by demanding fabrication tolerances, e.g., shell concentricity and shell surface smoothness. In particular, the latter is of paramount importance since DS targets are susceptible to the growth of interface perturbations from impulsive and time-dependent accelerations. Previous work (Milovich, J. L. et al., 2004) has indicated that the growth of perturbations on the outer surface of the inner shell is potentially disruptive. To control this instability new designs have been proposed requiring bimetallic inner shells and material-matching mid-Z nanoporous foam. The challenges in manufacturing such exotic foams have led to a further evaluation of the densities and pore sizes needed to reduce the seeding of perturbations on the outer surface of the inner shell, thereby guiding the ongoing material science research efforts. Highly-resolved 2D simulations of porous foams have been performed to establish an upper limit on the allowable pore sizes for instability growth. Simulations indicate that foams with higher densities than previously thought are now possible. Moreover, while at the present time we are only able to simulate foams with average pore sizes larger than 1 micron (due to computational limitations), we can conclude that these pore sizes are potentially problematic. Furthermore, the effect of low-order hohlraum radiation asymmetries on the growth of intrinsic surface perturbations is also addressed. Highly-resolved 2D simulations indicate that the transverse flows that are set up by these low-order mode features (which can excite Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities) are not large enough to offset the overall robustness of our current design
