Free Surface and Hydraulic Phenomena in Windowless Symmetrical Target

In the windowless concept for the Accelerator Driven Systems target the liquid flow in the spallation region must be able to remove the volumetric thermal power due to the proton interactions with nuclei. In this paper the hydraulic phenomena of a basic symmetrical windowless target configuration with two concentric cylinders have been studied. The tests were aimed to measure the profile of the free surface of the flow and the liquid velocity field, by using water as hydraulic equivalent to lead-bismuth eutectic fluid. The test section consists of two concentric plexiglass pipes (inner cylinder diameter 200 mm, outer cylinder diameter 290 mm) where the water flows up in the annular region and flows down in the central region. The most important experimental parameters are the fluid level measured from the top edge of the inner cylinder and the imposed flow rate. The experiments have been carried out at room temperature in the following range: flow rate from 2.5 to 20 kg/s; fluid level at zero flow rate from –50 to 186 mm.