To investigate liquid-metal (fuel)/water (coolant) interactions, a vertical shock tube has been designed and constructed. A series of tests was conducted with gallium, indium, lead, and fin as the fuel materials at either ''low'' (T-f similar to 300 degrees C) or ''high'' fuel temperature (T-f similar to 600 degrees C) with water at room temperature (low T-c) and in the range of T-c = 56 to 67 degrees C (high T-c) and with driving pressures from 0.25 to 1.22 MPa. These materials were tested to determine their compatibility for potential use in liquid-metal divertor systems for fusion power plants. The increase in fuel and water temperature, as well as the increase of driving pressure, caused more energetic interactions to occur. High T-f fin and lead interactions, and high T-f and T-c gallium and indium interactions were the most energetic. Stronger interactions produced finer debris fragments. In high T-f gallium and indium interactions, small superficial oxidation was observed. For the first two pulses, larger ratios of compression- (compression of expansion vessel gas) re-expansion work correspond to the experiments with higher fuel and coolant temperatures. For the first pulse, only work ratio values of the most energetic experiments are larger than those of isothermal experiments. Consequently, for such experiments, the impulse values of second pulses are the largest. Higher values of the conversion ratio for the first pulse correspond to more energetic interactions. Even for the most energetic experiments, the conversion ratio is no higher than 1.2, and no more than 15 (or a few millimetres-thick surface layer) of the initially loaded fuel participated in the interaction, assuming equal initial volumes of fuel and coolant. References: 17
展开▼
