Search

Beryllium is a material extensively used in various particle accelerator beam lines and target facilities, as beam windows and, to a lesser extent, as secondary particle production targets. With increasing beam intensities of future multimegawatt accelerator facilities, these components will have to withstand even greater thermal and mechanical loads during operation. As a result, it is critical to understand the beam-induced thermal shock limit of beryllium to help reliably operate these components without having to compromise particle production efficiency by limiting beam parameters. As part of the RaDIATE (radiation damage in accelerator target environments) Collaboration, an exploratory experiment to probe and investigate the thermomechanical response of several candidate beryllium grades was carried out at CERN’s HiRadMat facility, a user facility capable of delivering very-high-intensity proton beams to test accelerator components. Multiple arrays of thin beryllium disks of varying thicknesses and grades, as well as thicker cylinders, were exposed to increasing beam intensities to help identify any thermal shock failure threshold. Real-time experimental measurements and postirradiation examination studies provided data to compare the response of the various beryllium grades, as well as benchmark a recently developed beryllium Johnson-Cook strength model.

The Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF, formerly the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment) is under design as a next generation neutrino oscillation experiment, with primary objectives to search for CP violation in the leptonic sector, to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and to provide a precise measurement of θ_{23}. The facility will generate a neutrino beam at Fermilab by the interaction of a proton beam with a target material. At the ultimate anticipated proton beam power of 2.3 MW the target material must dissipate a heat load of between 10 and 25 kW depending on the target size. This paper presents a target concept based on an array of spheres and compares it to a cylindrical monolithic target such as that which currently operates at the T2K facility. Simulation results show that the proposed technology offers efficient cooling and lower stresses whilst delivering a neutrino production comparable with that of a conventional solid cylindrical target.