Fundamental study on wettability of pure metal by liquid sodium

Saito, Junichi  ; Shibutani, Hideo*; Kobayashi, Yohei*

Liquid sodium is used for a coolant of fast reactor, because of its high thermal conductivity and high melting temperature. Wettability is one of important properties to design the apparatus of fast reactor. It is well known wettability by liquid sodium changes by surface roughness and kind of metal, etc. We propose an atomic interaction between metal and liquid sodium also relates to wettability. The purpose of this study is to understand the wettability of pure metal by liquid sodium by both of experimental and theoretical approach. High purity metal plates of titanium, vanadium, iron, nickel copper and molybdenum were used for experiment. Wettability was evaluated using the contact angle obtained by tangent method. Simple surface models were constructed for theoretical calculation. The contact angel was evaluated using two kinds of atomic bond. As a result, it became clear there was relationship between the contact angle and atomic bond.