CFD Validation of Gas Injection in Flowing Mercury over Vertical Smooth and Grooved Wall
- ORNL
The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is an accelerator-based neutron source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).The nuclear spallation reaction occurs when a proton beam hits liquid mercury. This interaction causes thermal expansion of the liquid mercury which produces high pressure waves. When these pressure waves hit the target vessel wall, cavitation can occur and erode the wall. Research and development efforts at SNS include creation of a vertical protective gas layer between the flowing liquid mercury and target vessel wall to mitigate the cavitation damage erosion and extend the life time of the target. Since mercury is opaque, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be used as a diagnostic tool to see inside the liquid mercury and guide the experimental efforts. In this study, CFD simulations of three dimensional, unsteady, turbulent, two-phase flow of helium gas injection in flowing liquid mercury over smooth, vertically grooved and horizontally grooved walls are carried out with the commercially available CFD code Fluent-12 from ANSYS. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) model is used to track the helium-mercury interface. V-shaped vertical and horizontal grooves with 0.5 mm pitch and about 0.7 mm depth were machined in the transparent wall of acrylic test sections. Flow visualization data of helium gas coverage through transparent test sections is obtained with a high-speed camera at the ORNL target test facility (TTF). The helium gas mass flow rate is 8 mg/min and introduced through a 0.5 mm diameter port. The local mercury velocity is 0.9 m/s. In this paper, the helium gas flow rate and the local mercury velocity are kept constant for the three cases. Time integration of predicted helium gas volume fraction over time is done to evaluate the gas coverage and calculate the average thickness of the helium gas layer. The predicted time-integrated gas coverage over vertically grooved and horizontally grooved test sections is better than over a smooth wall. The simulations show that the helium gas is trapped inside the grooves. The predicted time-averaged gas coverage is in good qualitative agreement with the measured gas coverage.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Spallation Neutron Source (SNS)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1005182
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ASME Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting, Vail, CO, USA, 20090802, 20090805
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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