Thermal hydraulic analysis of IFMIF lithium target with incident deuteron beam

In the proposed International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF), an intense, high energy neutron flux will be generated by the stripping reaction of deuterons with energy of 30/40 MeV in a lithium target. The IFMIF target, which should remove up to 10 MW of thermal power, is made of a liquid lithium jet with one free surface (towards the deuteron beam) and a back-wall (towards the test cells). In this design the thermal and hydraulic stability of the lithium jet as well as the evaporation of lithium at the free surface are of major importance. Therefore, the principal objective of this work was to perform a thermal hydraulic analysis of the lithium target jet with incident deuteron beam. The turbulent flow and heat transfer in the target nozzle and in the lithium jet with incident beam have been simulated with the finite element code FIDAP. The profile of the deposited heat due to the stopping of the deuterons has been calculated using models for both electronic and nuclear stopping powers also including the temperature distribution in the target. To our knowledge this is one of the very few studies which includes a consistent simulation of the turbulent flow in both the target nozzle and the jet itself with application to all major target configurations. Although we used a different fluid-flow simulation code and a different lithium properties data set, most of our results for the reference IFMIF target are consistent with those of the IFMIF partner groups. Thus, the surface vaporization proved to be relatively small for beam and jet parameters studied. (orig./GL)Available from TIB Hannover: ZA 5141(5978) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman