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Populations of small helium gas bubbles were introduced into a flowing mercury experiment test loop to evaluate mitigation of beam-pulse induced cavitation damage and pressure waves. The test loop was developed and thoroughly tested at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) prior to irradiations at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center - Weapons Neutron Research Center (LANSCE-WNR) facility. Twelve candidate bubblers were evaluated over a range of mercury flow and gas injection rates by use of a novel optical measurement technique that accurately assessed the generated bubble size distributions. Final selection for irradiation testing included two variations of a swirl bubbler provided by Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) collaborators and one orifice bubbler developed at SNS. Bubble populations of interest consisted of sizes up to 150 m in radius with achieved gas void fractions in the 10^-5 to 10^-4 range. The nominal WNR beam pulse used for the experiment created energy deposition in the mercury comparable to SNS pulses operating at 2.5 MW. Nineteen test conditions were completed each with 100 pulses, including variations on mercury flow, gas injection and protons per pulse. The principal measure of cavitation damage mitigation was surface damage assessment on test specimens that were manuallymore » replaced for each test condition. Damage assessment was done after radiation decay and decontamination by optical and laser profiling microscopy with damaged area fraction and maximum pit depth being the more valued results. Damage was reduced by flow alone; the best mitigation from bubble injection was between half and a quarter that of flow alone. Other data collected included surface motion tracking by three laser Doppler vibrometers (LDV), loop wall dynamic strain, beam diagnostics for charge and beam profile assessment, embedded hydrophones and pressure sensors, and sound measurement by a suite of conventional and contact microphones.« less

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been conducting RD and protective gas walls that isolate the vessel from the damaging effects of collapsing cavitation bubbles. The latter has demonstrated good damage mitigation during in-beam testing with limited pulses, and adequate gas wall coverage at the beam entrance window has been demonstrated with the SNS mercury target flow configuration using a full scale mercury test loop. A question on the required area coverage remains which depends on results from SNS target post irradiation examination. The small gas bubble technique has been less effective during past in-beam tests but those results were with un-optimized and un-verified bubble populations. Another round of in-beam tests with small gas bubbles is planned for 2011. The first SNS target was removed from service in mid 2009 and samples were cut from two locations at the target’s beam entrance window. Through-wall damage was observed at the innermost mercury vessel wall (not a containment wall). The damage pattern suggested correlation with the local mercury flow condition which is nearly stagnant at the peak damage location. Detailed post irradiation examination of the samples is under way that will assess the erosion and measure irradiation-induced changes in mechanical properties. Similar samples were cut from the second SNS target after it was removed from service in mid 2010. More extensive damage was observed on the target inner wall but damage to the containment wall was minimal.

Proton beam experiments investigating cavitation damage in short pulse mercury spallation targets were performed at LANSCE – WNR in July of 2008. They included two main areas for investigation: damage dependence on mercury velocity using geometry more prototypic to the SNS target than previously employed and damage dependence on incident proton beam flux intensity. The flow dependence experiment employed six test targets with mercury velocity in the channel ranging from 0 to more than 4 m/s. Each was hit with 100 WNR beam pulses with peak proton flux equivalent to that of SNS operating at 2.7 MW. Damage dependence on incident proton beam flux intensity was also investigated with three intensity levels used on simple rectangular shaped targets without mercury flow. Intensity variation was imposed by focusing the beam differently while maintaining protons per pulse. This kept total energy deposited in each target constant. A fourth test target was hit with various beams: constant protons and varied spot size; constant spot size and varied protons. No damage will be assessed in this case. Instead, acoustic emissions associated with cavitation collapse were measured by laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) from readings of exterior vessel motions as well as by mercury wetted acoustic transducers. This paper will provide a description of the experiment and present available results. Damage assessment will require several months before surface analysis can be completed and was not available in time for IWSMT-9.

Establishment of a gas layer between the flowing liquid and container wall is proposed for mitigating the effects of cavitation in mercury spallation targets. Previous work has shown an order of magnitude decrease in damage for a gas layer developed in a stagnant mercury target for an in-beam experiment. This work is aimed at extending these results to the more complex conditions introduced by a flowing mercury target system. A water-loop has been fabricated to provide initial insights on potential gas injection methods into a flowing liquid. An existing full-scale flow loop designed to simulate the Spallation Neutron Source target system will be used to extend these studies to mercury. A parallel analytical effort is being conducted using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to provide direction to the experimental effort. Some preliminary simulations of gas injection through a single hole have been completed and show behavior of the models that is qualitatively meaningful.

Intense proton beam-induced heating of the spallation neutron source mercury target will cause pressure spikes that lead to the formation of cavitation bubbles in the mercury. Erosion of the mercury container walls caused by violent collapse of bubbles could potentially limit its service lifetime. In-beam tests for a limited number of pulses (

Previous experiments to examine corrosion resulting from thermal gradient mass transfer of type 316L stainless steel in mercury were conducted in thermal convection loops (TCLs) with an Hg velocity of about 1 m/min. These tests have now been supplemented with a series of experiments designed to examine the influence of increased flow velocity and possible cavitation conditions on compatibility. In one experiment, the standard TCL design was modified to include a reduced section in the hot leg that provided a concomitant increase in the local velocity by a factor of five. In addition, a pumped-loop experiment was operated with a flow velocity of about 1 m/s. Finally, a TCL was modified to include an ultrasonic transducer at the top of the hot leg in an attempt to generate cavitation conditions with corresponding extreme local velocity associated with collapsing bubbles. The results indicate that compatibility of type 316L/316LN stainless steel does not depend significantly on liquid metal velocity in the range of 1 m/min to 1 m/s. Benchtop cavitation experiments revealed susceptibility of 316L coupons to significant weight losses and increases in surface roughness as a result of 24 h exposure to 1.5 MPa pressure waves in Hg generated ultrasonically at 20 kHz. However, attempts to generate cavitation conditions on coupons inside the TCL with the ultrasonic transducer proved largely unsuccessful.

Pressure waves created in liquid mercury targets at the pulsed Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory induce cavitation damage on the stainless steel target vessel. The cavitation damage is thought to limit the lifetime of the target for power levels at and above 1 MW. Severe through-wall cavitation damage on an internal wall near the beam entrance window has been observed in spent-targets. Surprisingly though, there is very little damage on the walls that bound an annular mercury channel that wraps around the front and outside of the target. The mercury flow through this channel is characterized by smooth, attached streamlines. One theory to explain this lack of damage is that the uni-directional flow biases the direction of the collapsing cavitation bubble, reducing the impact pressure and subsequent damage. The theory has been reinforced by in-beam separate effects data. For this reason, a second-generation SNS mercury target has been designed with an internal wall jet configuration intended to protect the concave wall where damage has been observed. The wall jet mimics the annular flow channel streamlines, but since the jet is bounded on only one side, the momentum is gradually diffused by the bulk flow interactions as it progresses around the cicular path of the target nose. Numerical simulations of the flow through this jet-flow target have been completed, and a water loop has been assembled with a transparent test target in order to visualize and measure the flow field. This paper presents the wall jet simulation results, as well as early experimental data from the test loop.Copyright © 2014 by ASME

Pressure waves created in liquid mercury pulsed spallation targets have been shown to create cavitation damage to the target container. One way to mitigate such damage would be to absorb the pressure pulse energy into a dispersed population of small bubbles, however, creating such a population in mercury is difficult due to the high surface tension and particularly the non-wetting behavior of mercury on gas-injection hardware. If the larger injected gas bubbles can be broken down into small bubbles after they are introduced to the flow, then the material interface problem is avoided. Research at the Oak Ridge National Labarotory is underway to develop a technique that has shown potential to provide an adequate population of small-enough bubbles to a flowing spallation target. This technique involves gas injection at an orifice of a geometry that is optimized to the turbulence intensity and pressure distribution of the flow, while avoiding coalescence of gas at injection sites. The most successful geometry thus far can be described as a square-toothed orifice having a 2.5 bar pressure drop in the mercury flow of 8 L/s for one of the target inlet legs. High-speed video and high-resolution photography have been used to quantify the bubble population on the surface of the mercury downstream of the gas injection site. Also, computational fluid dynamics has been used to optimize the dimensions of the toothed orifice based on a RANS computed mean flow including turbulent energies such that the turbulent dissipation and pressure field are best suited for turbulent break-up of the gas bubbles.Copyright © 2010 by ASME

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is an accelerator-based neutron source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).The nuclear spallation reaction occurs when a proton beam hits liquid mercury. This interaction causes thermal expansion of the liquid mercury which produces high pressure waves. When these pressure waves hit the target vessel wall, cavitation can occur and erode the wall. Research and development efforts at SNS include creation of a vertical protective gas layer between the flowing liquid mercury and target vessel wall to mitigate the cavitation damage erosion and extend the life time of the target. Since mercury is opaque, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) may be used as a diagnostic tool to visualize the behavior of the liquid mercury and guide the experimental efforts. In this study, CFD simulations of three dimensional, unsteady, turbulent, two-phase flow of helium gas injection in flowing liquid mercury over smooth, vertically grooved and horizontally grooved walls are carried out with the commercially available CFD code Fluent-12 from ANSYS. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) model is used to track the helium-mercury interface. V-shaped vertical and horizontal grooves with 0.5 mm pitch and about 0.7 mm depth were machined in the transparent wall of acrylic test sections. Flow visualization data of helium gas coverage through transparent test sections is obtained with a high-speed camera at the ORNL Target Test Facility (TTF). The helium gas mass flow rate is 8 mg/min and introduced through a 0.5 mm diameter port. The inlet mercury mass flow rate is 51 kg/s and the predicted local mercury velocity is 0.9 m/s. In this paper, the helium gas flow rate and the local mercury velocity are kept constant for the three cases. Time integration of predicted helium gas volume fraction over time is done to evaluate the gas coverage and calculate the average thickness of the helium gas layer. The predicted time-integrated gas coverage over vertically grooved and horizontally grooved test sections is better than over a smooth wall. The simulations show that the helium gas is trapped inside the grooves.Copyright © 2009 by ASME

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee uses a liquid mercury target that is bombarded with protons to produce a pulsed neutron beam for materials research and development. In order to mitigate expected cavitation damage erosion (CDE) of the containment vessel, a two-phase flow arrangement of the target has been proposed and was earlier proven to be effective in significantly reducing CDE in non-prototypical target bodies. This arrangement involves covering vulnerable surfaces with a protective layer of gas. The difficulty lies in establishing a persistent gas layer that is oriented vertically and holds up to the strong buoyancy force and the turbulent mercury flow. Several new multiphase experiments have been completed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory toward developing such layers. The gas hold-up is accomplished by machining regular features (grooves or pits) into the wall with dimensions on the order of 1 mm. The thickness of the gas layer varies, and it is currently unknown how thick a layer must be in order to successfully mitigate the damage, although this aspect is also under investigation. The paper includes a description of the various tests, a presentation of high-speed video images of the gas/mercury interaction viewed through a transparent window, and a discussion of how the results can be used to design a new SNS target that might be resistant to cavitation damage erosion.Copyright © 2009 by ASME

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee uses a liquid mercury target that is bombarded with protons to produce a pulsed neutron beam for materials research and development. In order to mitigate expected cavitation damage erosion (CDE) of the containment vessel, a two-phase flow arrangement of the target has been proposed and was earlier proven to be effective in significantly reducing CDE in non-prototypical target bodies. This arrangement involves covering the beam “window”, through which the high-energy proton beam passes, with a protective layer of gas. The difficulty lies in establishing a stable gas/liquid interface that is oriented vertically with the window and holds up to the strong buoyancy force and the turbulent mercury flow field. Three approaches to establishing the gas wall have been investigated in isothermal mercury/gas testing on a prototypical geometry and flow: (1) free gas layer approach, (2) porous wall approach, and (3) surface-modified approach. The latter two of these approaches show success in that a stabilized gas layer is produced. Both of these successful approaches capitalize on the high surface energy of liquid mercury by increasing the surface area of the solid wall, thus increasing gas hold up at the wall. In this paper, a summary of these experiments and findings is presented as well as a description of the path forward toward incorporating the stabilized gas layer approach into a feasible gas/mercury SNS target design.Copyright © 2008 by ASME

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) facility uses a liquid mercury target that flows through a stainless steel containment vessel. As the SNS pulsed beam power level is increased, it is expected that the target vessel lifetime could become limited by cavitation damage erosion (CDE). Bubbles produced in mercury at an upwards-oriented vertical gas injector needle were observed with proton radiography (pRad) at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE). The comparison of volume-of-fluid (VOF) simulation results to the radiographic images reveals some aspects of success and some deficiencies in predicting these high surface tension, highly buoyant, and non-wetting fluid behavior. Although several gas flows were measured with pRad, this paper focuses on the case with a low gas flow rate of 1.66 mg/min (10 sccm) through the 0.2-mm-outer-diameter injector needle. The acoustic waves emitted due to the detachment of the bubble and during subsequent bubble oscillations were also recorded with a microphone, providing a precise measurement of the bubble sizes. When the mercury is also motivated coaxially, the drag on the bubble forces earlier detachment leading to smaller bubble sizes.

One option that shows promise for protecting solid surfaces from cavitation damage in liquid metal spallation targets involves introducing an interstitial gas layer between the liquid metal and the containment vessel wall. Several approaches toward establishing such a protective gas layer are being investigated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory including large bubble injection and methods that involve stabilization of the layer by surface modifications to enhance gas hold-up on the wall or by inserting a porous media. It has previously been reported that using a gas layer configuration in a test target showed an order-of-magnitude decrease in damage for an in-beam experiment. Video images that were taken of the successful gas/mercury flow configuration have been analyzed and correlated. The results show that the success was obtained under conditions where only 60% of the solid wall was covered with gas. Such a result implies that this mitigation scheme may have much more potential. Additional experiments with gas injection into water are underway. Multi-component flow simulations are also being used to provide direction for these new experiments. These simulations have been used to size the gas layer and position multiple inlet nozzles.