The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will undergo proton power upgrade (PPU), increasing the proton beam power from 1.4 MW to 2.8 MW. From 2.8 MW, 2.0 MW will go to the current First Target Station and the rest will go to the future Second Target Station (STS). The First Target Station uses a liquid mercury target that is contained in a 316L stainless steel vessel. The proton beam is pulsed at 60 Hz, with a pulse of about 0.7μs. When the proton beam hits the target, the intense energy deposition leads to a rapid rise in temperature in the mercury. This temperature rise creates pressure waves that propagate through the mercury and cause cavitation erosion. The power upgrade will cause stronger pressure waves that will further increase damage because of cavitation. Injecting small helium bubbles in the mercury has been an efficient method of mitigating the pressure wave at 1.4 MW. However, at higher power, additional mitigation is necessary. Therefore, the 2 MW target vessel will be equipped with swirl bubblers and an additional gas injection port near the nose to inject more gas in the target. To develop a gas injection strategy and design, flow visualization in water with a transparent prototypical target (“visual target”) was performed. Bubble sizes and their spatial distribution in the flow loop are crucial to understanding the effectiveness of the bubbles in mitigating pressure waves. Bubbles were generated in the visual target under varied conditions of input pressures with helium and air. Images were captured using a high-speed camera at varied frame rates at different positions away from the swirl bubbler and different depths in the flow loop under varying lighting conditions. Initially, methods such as circular Hough transforms were applied after a series of images processing to obtain a general distribution of bubble sizes. Bubbles smaller than 500 μm are preferred to effectively mitigate the effect of pressure waves, which demands an accurate bubble detection and sizing system. Intelligent detection and identification of bubble sizes alleviate misdetection and improves accuracies. Employing neural networks, intelligent detection of bubble sizes and their distribution was developed and provides a robust alternative to traditional techniques. Human intervention was employed to label in-focus and out-of-focus bubbles in the set of training images. An object detection network using a pretrained convolutional neural network was created that extracted the features from the training images. Data augmentation was used to improve network accuracy through a random transformation of the original data.

The Proton Power Upgrade (PPU) project will increase the proton beam power at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), requiring new cavitation erosion mitigation techniques for the mercury target vessel. More precisely, a gas wall layer will be injected on the wall surface where heavy cavitation erosion is observed. In this paper, a series of experiments were performed to develop a gas layer on a simplified target geometry. First, experiments in water were used to test a prototype injection strategy in a simplified target nose geometry. Then the experiment was repeated at the Target Test Facility (TTF) at ORNL where mercury wass flowed in the same geometry. Observations showed that gas injection into liquid metal was much more sensitive to flow velocity than in water. Ultimately, the experiments showed the gas injection must be located very close to the area of interest in a non-intrusive configuration to reduce shear stresses in the flow for good gas coverage. This technique will be next implemented in a more prototypical target.

As a non-intrusive, whole-field temperature measurement technique, LIF (Laser Induced Fluorescence) has been used successfully to measure temperature fields. The performances of dyes are essential of the technique, especially the temperature sensitivity of the dyes. This work presents an analysis to provide a correct choice of temperature sensitive dyes combination (FL27 and RhB). The influences of temperature, excitation wavelength and pH on emission intensity and temperature sensitivity were analyzed. The results show that the temperature dependent tendency of FL27 changed from negative to positive as the excitation wavelength increased. The temperature sensitivity (4.0% per °C) of combination under 532nm laser is better than that of the wide used combination of RhB and Rh110 (2.0% per °C). The emission intensities of dyes are sensitive to pH value; however, the temperature dependence is unaffected.

In the Advanced Gas Cooled Pebble Bed Reactors for nuclear power generation, the fuel is spherical coated particles. The energy transfer phenomenon requires detailed understanding of the flow and temperature fields around the spherical fuel pebbles. Detailed information of the complex flow structure within the bed is needed. Generally, for computing the flow through a packed bed reactor or column, the porous media approach is usually used with lumped parameters for hydrodynamic calculations and heat transfer. While this approach can be reasonable for calculating integral flow quantities, it may not provide all the detailed information of the heat transfer and complex flow structure within the bed. The present experimental study presents the full velocity field using particle image velocity technique (PTV) in a conjunction with matched refractive index fluid with the pebbles to achieve optical access. Velocity field measurements are presented delineating the complex flow structure.

Experiments were carried out to investigate turbulent sub-cooled boiling flow of Novec-2000 [1] refrigerant through a vertical square channel with one heated wall. Channel dimensions were selected to be similar to those encountered on a Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) channel flow, with an hydraulic diameter of D h = 8.2 mm. Flow visualization techniques such as Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) and Shadowgraphy were used to measure time-average axial and normal velocities, axial and normal turbulence intensities, and Reynolds Stresses. Results are reported for hydraulic Reynolds numbers at channel inlet of 4638 , 14513 and 24188 for up to thirteen wall heat fluxes (q ″ ) ranging from 0.0 to 64.0 kW/m 2 . This work is an attempt to enrich the database already collected on turbulent subcooled boiling flow, with the hope that it will be useful in turbulence modeling efforts.

In this study, the velocity field of impinging jets within a rod bundle was developed. Velocity measurements were accomplished using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Additionally, Matched-Index of Refraction (MIR) techniques were implemented to allow the visualization of flow characteristics within interior areas of the rod bundle which would typically be obstructed. Such measurements are of importance and essential to the development of new models to predict the systems’ hydraulic behavior.

Measurements of the velocity fields and wall pressure have been performed in a microbubble laden boundary layer in order to have a better understanding of the degree of correlation between these two parameters. Cross-correlation coefficients have been obtained from synchronized measurements of pressure and velocity at different distances from the wall in a channel flow. The results show a high correlation between pressure and both the streamwise and normal components of the velocity vector for the two-phase flow case. In contrast, the correlation coefficient between pressure and velocity is high only for the streamwise component of the velocity vector for single phase flow (no microbubbles in the flow). A practical application of these measurements is obtaining data and information to better describe the mechanism responsible for the microbubble drag reduction phenomenon, which has great potential for energy savings on different transport means.

Investigation of the drag reduction phenomenon has been carried out for several years. Several techniques to reduce the drag have been applied and researched for a number of years. Microbubbles injection within a turbulent boundary layer is one method utilized to achieve reduction of drag. In this work, the effects of the presence of microbubbles in the boundary layer of a turbulent channel flow are discussed.