The dynamic behavior of cavitation and gas bubbles under negative pressure has been studied numerically to evaluate the effect of gas bubble injection into a liquid on the suppression of cavitation inception. In our previous studies, it was demonstrated by direct observation that cavitation occurs in liquid mercury when mechanical impacts are imposed, and this will cause cavitation damage in spallation neutron sources, in which liquid mercury is bombarded by a high-power proton beam. In the present paper, we describe numerical investigations of the dynamics of cavitation bubbles in liquid mercury using a multibubble model that takes into account the interaction of a cavitation bubble with preexisting gas bubbles through bubble-radiated pressure waves. The numerical results suggest that, if the mercury includes gas bubbles whose equilibrium radius is much larger than that of the cavitation bubble, the explosive expansion of the cavitation bubble (i.e., cavitation inception) is suppressed by the positive-pressure wave radiated by the injected bubbles, which decreases the magnitude of the negative pressure in the mercury.

At the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC), a pulsed spallation neutron source provides neutrons with high intensity and narrow pulse width pulse to promote researches on a variety of science in the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility (MLF). It was designed to be driven by a proton beam with an energy of 3 GeV, a power of 1 MW at a repetition rate of 25 Hz, that is world’s highest power level. It is still on the way towards the goal to accomplish the operation with a 1 MW proton beam. In this review, distinctive features of the target-moderator-reflector system of the pulsed spallation neutron source are presented.

The direct observation of cavitation bubbles emerging in liquid mercury under the action of mechanical impacts and theoretical investigations on the experimental results have been made. Through a glass wall, the image of cavitation bubbles appearing near or in contact with the wall was captured by high-speed cameras. Discrepancies found between the bubbles’ growth rates determined experimentally and given by a single-bubble theory have been discussed using a theoretical model of Rayleigh-Plesset type that takes into account bubble-bubble and bubble-wall interactions. A theoretical equation for the asymptotic growth rate in a multibubble case has been given and time dependence of the growth rate under a constant negative pressure has been clarified.

A liquid-mercury target system for the MW-scale target is being developed in the world. The pitting damage induced by pressure wave propagation gets to be one of critical issues to estimate the lif...

A lead bismuth eutectic (LBE) spallation target will be installed in the Target Test Facility (TEF-T) in the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC). The spallation target vessel filled with LBE is made of type 316L stainless steel. However, various damages, such as erosion/corrosion damage and liquid metal embrittlement caused by contact with flowing LBE at high temperature, and irradiation hardening caused by protons and neutrons, may be inflicted on the target vessel, which will deteriorate the steel and might break the vessel. To monitor the target vessel for prevention of an accident, an ultrasonic technique has been proposed to establish off-line evaluation for estimating vessel material status during the target maintenance period. Basic R&D must be carried out to clarify the dependency of ultrasonic wave propagation behavior on material microstructures and obtain fundamental knowledge. As a first step, ultrasonic waves scattered by the grains of type 316L stainless steel are investigated using new experimental and numerical approaches in the present study. The results show that the grain size can be evaluated exactly and quantitatively by calculating the attenuation coefficient of the ultrasonic waves scattered by the grains. The results also show that the scattering regimes of ultrasonic waves depend heavily on the ratio of wavelength to average grain size, and are dominated by grains of extraordinarily large size along the wave propagation path.