Computational and experimental studies of the flow field near the beam entrance window of a liquid metal target

After the first world liquid metal target has been successfully operated at the SINQ facility at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) for 6 months. The idea of having a reliable target with a bypass flow for cooling the beam entrance window, but with the bypass flow not driven by a separate pump, was examined within the project called LIMETS (Liquid Metal Target for SINQ). In designing of liquid metal targets, turbulence modelling is of high importance due to lack in methods for measuring the spatial distribution of flow and turbulence characteristics. In this study, validation of different turbulence models were performed in water model with hemispherical geometry using particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique. Two components of water flow velocity in plexiglas container with inner radius of 88 mm were measured in different cross sections, with the velocities varying from 1 to 10 m/s. Numerical calculations using large eddy simulation (LES) approach and Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) models were carried out to validate their applicability and study performance issues. Mean velocity and turbulence kinetic energy data were used for comparison of PIV and calculation results. Reasonable agreement was obtained for mean velocity data, with some discrepancies due to the limited length of the inlet tube. However, several discrepancies in turbulence characteristics were found in numerical results, especially in RANS model calculations.