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Copper melting behavior at extreme temperatures could inform fusion materials
Using SLAC’s electron camera, researchers recorded timestamps of solid copper atoms (orange) as they melted (yellow) after being blasted with laser heat. This graphic shows how copper atoms changed over a period of several femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second), notated here as fractions of a picosecond. Instead of the predicted collapse, the researchers saw a gradual melting. (Image: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has announced researchers have conducted experiments testing how copper melts under extreme conditions, such as those it might be exposed to in a fusion machine. The results, published in Nature Communications, found that a copper thin film was more resilient to melting than models had predicted, uncovering molecular dynamics that had been missing from calculations.
“These results greatly improve the simulations we use to predict which materials have the best shot at surviving the extreme conditions of future fusion reaction chambers,” said Mianzhen Mo, the SLAC staff scientist who led the research.
Brian C. Kiedrowski
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 185 | Number 3 | March 2017 | Pages 426-444
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1283153
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since the 1960s, Monte Carlo methods have been used to compute the effect of perturbations on system responses and for computing sensitivity coefficients. This review article focuses on 21st-century developments specific to k-eigenvalue calculations. The theory of correlated sampling, differential operator sampling, and adjoint-based approaches and their historical methods from the 20th century are briefly summarized. Specific focus is given to four recent and significant developments: fission source correction using the correlated sampling and differential operator sampling methods, adjoint-based perturbations for the k eigenvalue using the iterated fission probability method, an extension to reaction rate ratios using generalized perturbation theory, and a recent development using a collision history approach allowing for the calculation of sensitivity coefficients of bilinear ratios and generalized responses. Differences and similarities of the four methods are discussed along with a comparison to the 20th-century approaches. A perspective on future developments is also given.