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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Chan Liu, Ming-Jiu Ni, Nian-Mei Zhang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 1 | July 2016 | Pages 83-96
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-141
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Temporal instability of liquid-metal flow in a square duct is investigated using a two-dimensional Chebyshev collocation method. In this study, the flow is subjected to a transverse magnetic field. The wall of the duct perpendicular to the magnetic field and the left parallel wall is perfectly conducting whereas the right parallel wall is insulating. Neutral stability curves are obtained for different Hartmann numbers. The five influencing factors of the instability are analyzed by energy analysis of perturbations. With the increase of Hartmann number, the critical Reynolds number first decreases rapidly and then increases gradually. The turning point of the variation of Rec with Ha is at Ha ≈ 20.4. When Ha < 20.4, velocity shear near the inflection point plays a dominant role in leading to the flow instability. When Ha becomes >20.4, perturbations produced by the inflectional velocity profile and Tollmien-Schlichting waves in the side layer are elongated by the nonuniform velocity in transverse direction; thus, the flow instability is caused by the combined effect at a much lower Reynolds number.