Effect of inner wall cracking on the cavitation bubble formation in the mercury spallation target at J-PARC

Ariyoshi, Gen; Saruta, Koichi; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Futakawa, Masatoshi; Maeno, Koki*; Li, Y.*; Tsutsui, Kihei*

Proceedings of 20th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-20) (Internet), p.1407 - 1420, 2023/08

https://doi.10.13182/NURETH20-41514

Cavitation damage on a target vessel due to proton beam-induced pressure waves is one of the crucial issues for the pulsed neutron source using a mercury spallation target. As a mitigation technique for the damage, the helium microbubble injection into the mercury has been carried out by using a swirl bubbler in order to utilize compressibility of bubbles. Moreover, double-walled structure, which consists of an outer wall and an inner wall, has been applied as the target head structure. In this study, we aim to develop an abnormality diagnostic technology to detect the inner wall cracking, which is caused by such cavitation damage, from the outside of the target vessel. The mercury flow fields in the case with the cracking are evaluated by computational fluid dynamics analysis based on finite element method. And then, effect of the cracking on the flow field is discussed from the point of view of the flow-induced vibration and the acoustic vibration.

Technical note for the cavitation damage inspection for interior surface of the mercury target vessel, 1; Development of specimen cutting machine for remote handling

Naoe, Takashi; Kinoshita, Hidetaka; Wakui, Takashi; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Haga, Katsuhiro

JAEA-Technology 2022-018, 43 Pages, 2022/08

JAEA-Technology-2022-018.pdf:7.84MB

In the liquid mercury target system for the pulsed spallation neutron source of Materials and Life science experimental Facility (MLF) at the Japan in the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC), cavitation that is generated by the high-energy proton beam-induced pressure waves, resulting severe erosion damage on the interior surface of the mercury target vessel. The erosion damage is increased with increasing the proton beam power, and has the possibility to cause the leakage of mercury by the penetrated damage and/or the fatigue failure originated from erosion pits during operation. To achieve the long term stable operation under high-power proton beam, the mitigation technologies for cavitation erosion consisting of surface modification on the vessel interior surface, helium gas microbubble injection, double-walled beam window structure has been applied. The damage on interior surface of the vessel is never observed during the beam operation. Therefore, after the target operation term ends, we have cut out specimen from the target nose of the target vessel to inspect damaged surface in detail for verification of the cavitation damage mitigation technologies and lifetime estimation. We have developed the techniques of specimen cutting out by remote handling under high-radiation environment. Cutting method was gradually updated based on experience in actual cutting for the used target vessel. In this report, techniques of specimen cutting out for the beam entrance portion of the target vessel in high-radiation environment and overview of the results of specimen cutting from actual target vessels are described.

Mitigation of cavitation damage in J-PARC mercury target vessel

Naoe, Takashi; Kinoshita, Hidetaka; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Wakui, Takashi; Wakai, Eiichi; Haga, Katsuhiro; Takada, Hiroshi

JPS Conference Proceedings (Internet), 28, p.081004_1 - 081004_6, 2020/02

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSCP.28.081004

The beam window of the mercury target vessel in J-PARC is severely damaged by the cavitation. The cavitation damage is a crucial factor to limit lifetime of the target because it increases with the beam power. Therefore, mitigating cavitation damage is an important issue to operate the target stably for long time at 1 MW. At J-PARC, to mitigate the cavitation damage: gas microbubbles are injected into mercury for suppressing pressure waves, and double-walled structure with a narrow channel of 2 mm in width to form high-speed mercury flow (4m/s) has been adopted. After operation, the beam window was cut to inspect the effect of the cavitation damage mitigation on inner wall. We optimized cutting conditions through the cold cutting tests, succeeding in cutting the target No.2 (without damage mitigation technologies) smoothly in 2017, and target No.8 with damage mitigation technologies. In the workshop, progress of cavitation damage observation for the target vessel will be presented.

Evaluation growing and collapsing behaviors of cavitation bubbles under flowing condition

Kawamura, Shunsuke; Naoe, Takashi; Ikeda, Tsubasa*; Tanaka, Nobuatsu*; Futakawa, Masatoshi

Advanced Experimental Mechanics, 4, p.33 - 37, 2019/08

A mercury enclosure vessel made of stainless steel is used as a spallation target in the pulsed spallation neutron source at J-PARC. It is severely damaged by the cavitation induced with pressure waves in association with the pulsed proton beam injection. A double-walled structure with a narrow mercury channel was adopted in the front end of the target vessel to reduce the cavitation damage. It has been experimentally demonstrated that the cavitation damage could be mitigated in the narrow channel but its mechanism has been unclarified yet. In this study, we investigated the cavitation from growing to collapsing through visualizing the spark-induced cavitation bubbles under flow field using a high-speed video camera. Furthermore, we measured the wall vibration due to the cavitation bubble collapse with changing flow velocity parametrically. It was found that the microjet collided perpendicular to the wall in the stagnant flow condition while it collided with an inclined angle from the perpendicular direction, suggesting that the collision pressure on the wall was reduced by flowing.

Current status of the high intensity pulsed spallation neutron source at J-PARC

Takada, Hiroshi

Plasma and Fusion Research (Internet), 13(Sp.1), p.2505013_1 - 2505013_8, 2018/03

http://www.jspf.or.jp/PFR/PFR_articles/pfr2018/pfr2018_13-2505013.html

The pulsed spallation neutron source of Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) has been supplying users with high intensity and sharp pulse cold neutrons using the moderators with following distinctive features; (1) 100% para-hydrogen for increasing pulse peak intensity with decreasing pulse tail, (2) cylindrical shape with 14 cm diam.12 cm long for providing high intensity neutrons to wide neutron extraction angles of 50.8, (3) neutron absorber made from Ag-In-Cd alloy to make pulse width narrower and pulse tails lower. Actually, it was measured at a low power operation that high neutron intensity of 4.510 n/cm/s/sr could be emitted from the coupled moderator surface for 1-MW operation, and a superior resolution of d/d = 0.035% was achieved at a beamline (BL8) with a poisoned moderator, where d is the d-spacing of reflection. Towards the goal to achieve the target operation at 1-MW for 5000 h in a year, technical developments to mitigate cavitation damages on the target vessel with injecting gas micro-bubbles into mercury target and design improvement of target vessel structure to reducing welds and bolt connections as much as possible are under way.

Study on optimisation of target head design for the TEF-T LBE spallation target

Wan, T.; Obayashi, Hironari; Sasa, Toshinobu

NEA/CSNI/R(2017)2 (Internet), p.117 - 127, 2017/06

https://www.oecd-nea.org/science/docs/2017/nsc-r2017-2.pdf

Study on surface tension modeling for mechanistic evaluation of vortex cavitation

Ito, Kei; Ezure, Toshiki; Ohshima, Hiroyuki; Kawamura, Takumi*; Nakamine, Yoshiaki*

Proceedings of 9th Korea-Japan Symposium on Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics and Safety (NTHAS-9) (CD-ROM), 6 Pages, 2014/11

The authors have been studied the vortex cavitation in sodium-cooled fast reactors. In this paper, the authors present a modified evaluation method for vortex cavitation, in which a surface tension is modeled mechanistically. Namely, the cavity radius is calculated in consideration of radial pressure distribution, saturated vapor pressure and the pressure jump condition at an interface. As the basic validation of the developed surface tension model, numerical analyses of a simple experiment under various velocity conditions are performed. The evaluation results give qualitatively appropriate tendency, that is, the cavity radius becomes larger with the higher liquid velocity and/or lower reference pressure which cause the larger pressure drop at the vortex. In addition, the authors evaluate the influence of the kinematic viscosity which plays an important role in the vortex cavitation occurrences in the experiments.

Micro-impact damage caused by mercury bubble collapse

Futakawa, Masatoshi; Naoe, Takashi*; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Date, Hidefumi*; Ikeda, Yujiro

JSME International Journal, Series A, 48(4), p.234 - 239, 2005/10

Mercury target will be installed at the material science and life facility in J-PARC, which will promote innovative science. The mercury target will be subjected to the pressure wave caused by proton bombarding in the mercury. The pressure wave propagation induces the cavitation in mercury that imposes localized impact damage on the target vessel. The impact erosion is a critical issue to decide the lifetime of target. An electromagnetic impact testing machine, MIMTM, was developed to reproduce the localized impact erosion damage and evaluate the damage formation. Additionally, droplet impact analyses were carried out to investigate the correlation between isolate pit profile and micro-jet velocity. We confirmed that the value of depth/radius was applicable to estimate micro-jet velocity, and the velocity at 560 W in MIMTM equivalent to 1MW proton beam injection was 300 m/s approximately.

Estimation of pitting damage induced by cavitation impacts

Soyama, Hitoshi*; Futakawa, Masatoshi; Homma, Kana*

Journal of Nuclear Materials, 343(1-3), p.116 - 122, 2005/08

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2004.11.016

In order to estimate life time of the mercury target vessel of spallation neutron source which will be subjected to cavitation impacts, prediction methods of pitting damage induced by the cavitation impact were proposed. It is very important to estimate incubation time, in which plastic deformation occurs without mass loss, because the thickness of vessel is very thin. In the present paper, two estimation methods were proposed. One of them is estimatiion from erosion test of severely damaged specimen by plotting the mass loss as a function of exposure time to cavitation on the logarithmic scales. Another method is the observation method of plastic deformation pits on damaged surface at very early period in incubation stage.

Damage diagnostic of localized impact erosion by measuring acoustic vibration

Futakawa, Masatoshi; Naoe, Takashi*; Kogawa, Hiroyuki; Ikeda, Yujiro

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 41(11), p.1059 - 1064, 2004/11

https://doi.org/10.3327/jnst.41.1059

High power spallation targets for neutron sources are developing in the world. Mercury target will be installed at the material and life science facility in J-PARC, which will promote innovative science. The mercury target is subject to the pressure wave caused by the proton bombarding mercury. The pressure wave propagation induces the cavitation in mercury that imposes localized impact damage on the target vessel. The impact erosion is a critical issue to decide the lifetime of the target. The electric Magnetic Impact Testing Machine, MIMTM, was developed to produce the localized impact erosion damage and evaluate the damage formation. Acoustic vibration measurement was carried out to investigate the correlation between damage and acoustic vibration. It was confirmed that the acoustic vibration is useful to predict the damage due to the localized impact erosion and to diagnose the structural integrity.