Abstract
Construction of a neutron scattering experiment facility of MW scale using a high intensity proton accelerator is carried out by JAEA (the Japan Atomic Energy Agency) and KEK (the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization). Since liquid mercury is to be used for the target as a spallation neutron source, there is concern that pitting damages are formed to the vessel wall due to the mercury cavitation. Negative pressures will cause the formation of short-lived cavities in the mercury. Those cavities that collapse on the interface between the mercury and the target vessel wall will develop erosion (pits) in the wall surface. We aim to numerically elucidate and predict the cavitation phenomena and the erosion effect. For the purpose, we have developed a numerical code called CRIMSON (Civa RefIned Multiphase SimulatiON) to evaluate behaviors of the cavitating bubbles based on the recent CFD (computational fluid dynamics) techniques. CRIMSON employs a finite-volume method combined with the high order interpolation scheme, CIVA (cubic-interpolation with area/volume coordinates). The CRIMSON solves gas-liquid two phases by a unified scheme of CUP (combined unified procedure). In this paper, in order to evaluate the erosion of solid materials by cavitation, we extend the CRIMSON code to be able to treat the gas-liquid-solid three-phases. For verifying the code, we numerically analyzed the erosion phenomenon by water cavitation and compared the results with the past study.
