Liquid Heavy Metal Applications for Particle Accelerators
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Lead possesses high density and excellent heat capacity, making it an ideal candidate for managing high power densities across various fields. Revitalized applications of this heavy liquid metal as a coolant in Generation IV nuclear reactors have opened new possibilities, including its use as an operating fluid in particle accelerators, where it becomes a target for laser beams. This study is carried out considering liquid lead in an alternative design for the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) Beam Dump Facility (BDF) at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis are conducted with various to depict the liquid lead behaviour and predict the temperature field on the target vessel induced by the beams, modelled as a heat source acting on the target volume. We consider a pulsed proton laser beam hitting the target every 7.2 seconds with an average deposited power of 355 kW and a 400 GeV/c momentum. The charged beam data are provided by CERN through a Monte Carlo analysis of beam-lead interaction simulations.
