Publications

Flow instabilities in refractory metal, porous media, helium-cooled plasma facing components

Youchison, Dennis L.; Nygren, Richard E.

Past numerical investigations of the performance of porous media to enhance heat transfer in helium-cooled devices neglected the susceptibility of multi-channel heat sinks to parallel flow instabilities even though experimental evidence suggests it may be a problem for narrow channel devices. In previous work, our simulations have shown that helium micro-jets do not experience changes in flow distribution due to non-uniform heating. However, jets are difficult to fabricate for large area refractory metal components. The same is not true for narrow channel devices filled with porous media. Although these refractory devices are easier to fabricate, the effects of downstream hot gas expansion can influence the incoming flow distribution in multi-channel configurations.