Reactive wetting by liquid sodium on thin Au plating

Kawaguchi, Munemichi   ; Hamada, Hirotsugu  

The behavior of sodium wetting is investigated for the practical use of the under sodium viewer (USV), in which the modeling of the reactive and non-reactive wetting for the metallic-plated steels by liquid sodium are performed to simulate the behavior of sodium wetting. Simulation results of the non-reactive wetting showed a good agreement with the Tanner's law. For the simulation of reactive wetting, the model of fluid flow induced by the interfacial reaction was incorporated into that of the non-reactive wetting. The simulation results of the reactive wetting, such as the behavior of precursor liquid film and the central droplet, showed a good agreement with the sodium wetting experiments using thin Au plating at 250C. In reactive wetting simulation, it is important that the gradient of reaction energy at the interface appeared on the new interface around the triple junction, and that the fluid flow was induced.