Structural-hydraulic test of the liquid metal EURISOL target mock-up

Abstract Structural-hydraulic tests of the European Isotope Separation On-Line (EURISOL) neutron converter target mock-up, named MErcury Target EXperiment 1 (METEX 1), have been conducted by Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI, Switzerland) in cooperation with Institute of Physics of the University of Latvia (IPUL, Latvia). PSI proceeded with extensive thermal-hydraulic and structural computational studies, followed by the target mock-up tests carried out on the mercury loop at IPUL. One of the main goals of the METEX 1 test is to investigate the hydraulic and structural behaviour of the EURISOL target mock-up for various inlet flow conditions (i.e. mass flow rates) and, in particular, for nominal operating flow rate and pressure in the system. The experimental results were analysed by advanced time–frequency methods such as Short-Time Fourier Transform in order to check the vibration characteristics of the mock-up and the resonance risk. The experimental results (obtained in METEX 1), which include inlet flow rate, pressure of the cover gas, total pressure loss, structural acceleration, sound and strain data, were jointly analysed together with numerical data obtained from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).