Micro-Impact Damage Caused by Mercury Bubble Collapse

Abstract

High-power spallation targets for neutron sources are being developed in the world. 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 560W in MIMTM equivalent to 1MW proton beam injection was ∼ 10²m/s approximately.