Thermal-hydraulic analysis of the TRADE spallation target

Abstract

The experimental facility TRADE serves to demonstrate the coupling between proton accelerator, spallation target and subcritical blanket at sizeable power (several 100 kW s). Solid tantalum target cooled with water is selected. The integrity of the spallation target has to be guaranteed during the entire operation time. This implies a limitation in thermal-mechanical stresses and the avoidance of boiling crisis. Design of the target requires both numerical analysis and experimental confirmation. In this paper, thermal-hydraulic analysis was carried out using Computational Fluid dynamics (CFD) codes, to investigate the target performance and to support the design of the target simulator for the out-of-pile experiment. The present results show a sufficient cooling capability of the target at nominal operating conditions. Comparison of numerical results shows a good agreement between various CFD codes used by different institutions. Based on CFD results, a design of the target simulator for the out-of-pile experiment is proposed.