Mitigation Technologies for Damage Induced by Pressure Waves in High-Power Mercury Spallation Neutron Sources (III)—Consideration of the Effect of Microbubbles on Pressure Wave Propagation through a Water Test—

Abstract

The effects of microbubbles dispersed in a liquid on a high-rising-rate pressure wave were experimentally investigated with water. Intense, high-rising-rate pressure waves with a rise time of about 1.5 ms were produced by a spark discharge in water, and gas microbubbles were produced by two different bubble generators. Particular attention was focused on the attenuation effect of microbubbles on propagating pressure waves. The dependence of the attenuation effect on the radius and void fraction of the microbubbles was carefully examined. It was found that when the microbubbles are sufficiently small (e.g., about 50 μm in peak radius), the amplitude of wall vibration induced by the spark-induced pressure wave is dramatically decreased with an increase in void fraction. The present study provides strong experimental evidence that microbubbles can act as a strong absorber for high-rising-rate pressure waves as recently predicted numerically.

KEYWORDS:

• pressure wave
• microbubbles
• water
• spark discharge
• spallation neutron source