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Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
T. Endo, N. Kobayashi, K. Goto, M. Yasuda, Y. Fujima
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 3 | May 2003 | Pages 270-274
Technical Paper | Targets and Target Protection During Injection | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A266
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments on the wall-thickness dependence of the cooling-induced deformation (CID) of polystyrene (PS) spherical shells were carried out. For the experiments, the PS shells were fabricated by the density-matched emulsion method using the hand-shaken microencapsulation technique. The number-averaged and weight-averaged molecular weights of the PS were Mn = 1.1 × 105 and Mw = 4.0 × 105, respectively. The diameter of the PS shells was ~400-550 m. To investigate the wall-thickness dependence of the CID, the wall thickness of the PS shells was varied between 5 and 60 m. In the experiments, the PS shells were cooled by using liquid nitrogen, and their images were captured at 0 and -190°C. For the investigation of the CID, two shapes of each shell that were measured at 0 and -190°C were compared. The thinner PS shells showed larger CID. The maximum deformation was almost 1% of the outer radius when the shell aspect ratio (outer radius)/(wall thickness) was higher than 20. The repeatability of the CID was studied, and the results implied that residual stress in the PS shells had an influence on the CID.