Characteristics of Thermal–Hydraulic and Heat Transfer in Liquid Windowless Target of Accelerator Driven Subcritical

In recent years, the morphological characteristics and stabilization methods of free interface in liquid windowless target become hot research topics in accelerator driven subcritical system (ADS). Based on the structure design of a certain windowless spallation target, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software of CFX was used to simulate and analyze its free interface character. The method of k–ε turbulence, cavitation, and volume of fluid (VOF) model was used to study the flow characteristic of liquid Lead-Bismuth eutectic (LBE) alloy with cavitation phase change and to analyze the free interface morphology characteristics of coolant in the target area. It is concluded that the target region forms two stable free interfaces when fluid outlet pressure is in the range of 10–40 kPa and fluid entrance velocity is in the range of 0.5–1.2 m/s. The flow field near the free interface structure is complex. The vortex region appears, and the disorders in the vortex flow pattern lead to fluctuation of the free interface. After the study of stable free interface morphology establishing process, heat transfer characteristic of windowless target was further analyzed.