Pressure and stress waves in a spallation neutron source mercury target generated by high-power proton pulses

The international ASTE collaboration has performed a first series of measur ements on a spallation neutron source target at the Alternating Gradient Sy nchrotron (AGS) in Brookhaven. The dynamic response of a liquid mercury tar get hit by high-power proton pulses of about 40 ns duration has been measur ed by a laser Doppler technique and compared with finite elements calculati ons using the ABAQUS code. It is shown that the calculation can describe th e experimental results for at least the time interval up to 100 mu s after the pulse injection. Furthermore, it has been observed that piezoelectric p ressure transducers cannot be applied in the high gamma-radiation field of a spallation target. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.