Pitting Damage Formation up to over 10 Million Cycles Off-line Test by MIMTM

Abstract

A liquid-mercury target system for the MW-scale target is being developed in the world. The pitting damage induced by pressure wave propagation gets to be one of critical issues to estimate the life of the target structure with mercury and to evaluate its structural integrity. The off-line test on the pitting damage at high cycles over 10 millions was carried out using a novel device, the MIMTM which drives electromagnetically to impose pulse pressure into the mercury. It was found from the pitting damage data obtained by the MIMTM and comparison with classical vibratory hone tests that the pitting damage can be characterized in two steps, an incubation period that can extend to 106 cycles in 20% cold worked 316SS and 107 cycles in surface hardening treated one and steady state erosion where mass loss scales with the number of cycles to approximately the 1.27 power for mercury. The length of the incubation period is primarily a function of the material and the intensity of the pressure. This observation provides a simple model for estimating lifetime for different materials and beam power.