Conceptual design of helium cooling circuit for irradiation target

• Helium cooling circuit arrangements for irradiated high heat flux specimens.
• Different jet cooling correlations available in the literature are compared.
• Numerical predictions have been carried out using different turbulence models.
• Validation with empirical correlations, experiment and numerical predictions.
• Martin’s correlation used for the estimation of heat removal from the specimens.

Small metal specimens of about 20 mm × 20 mm and 0.4 mm thick are irradiated in cyclotron facilities for radiation damage studies. Cooling of these specimens is an important factor which decides the intensity of irradiation. In this paper helium is used for the cooling of irradiation target specimen. In order to have enhanced heat removal from the specimen jet cooling is employed. The cooling scheme and the conceptual helium cooling circuit has been arrived at based on the empirical correlation available in the literature. The heat removal rate has been estimated for various jet velocities. Experiments with impinging air jets have been carried out to compare the empirical predictions. Numerical predictions have also been carried out using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) code. Experimental predictions are 35%–55% higher compare to empirical correlation. The empirical correlation is 30% higher compare to CFD predictions.