Study on cavitation damage evolution influenced by input power

Wakui, Takashi  ; Takagishi, Yoichi*; Futakawa, Masatoshi  

Cavitation damage is one of crucial issues to predict the structural endurability of the mercury targets for highly intensive pulsed neutron sources. Based on the comparison with numerical simulation on the pit shape and results of the basic test, the cavitation bubble collapsing was assumed to be resulted in the micro jet with the impact velocity of 160-200 m/s, imposing then impact pressure of 3-4 GPa at the input power simulating the operation condition in the mercury targets. It was statistically understandable that cavitation damage evolution was proportional to 4th power of the input power approximately, as taking the aggressivity of cavitation bubbles, the distribution of the maximum diameter of grown bubbles and the space of distribution of bubbles in the mercury into account.