Design of a compact high-power neutron source-The EURISOL converter target

The current paper presents the design of a compact high-power liquid-metal neutron source comprising a specially optimised beam window concept. The design is based on two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulations for thermal hydraulics and hydraulic aspects, as well as finite-element method (FEM) for assessing thermo-mechanical stability. The resulting optimised design was validated by a dedicated hydraulic test under realistic flow conditions. A full-scale mock-up was built at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and was tested at the Institute of Physics of the University of Latvia (IPUL).