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 measurements on a spallation neutron source target at the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) in Brookhaven. The dynamic response of a liquid mercury target hit by high-power proton pulses of about 40 ns duration has been measured by a laser Doppler technique and compared with finite elements calculations using the ABAQUS code. It is shown that the calculation can describe the experimental results for at least the time interval up to 100 μs after the pulse injection. Furthermore, it has been observed that piezoelectric pressure transducers cannot be applied in the high γ-radiation field of a spallation target.