Target station 2 (TS2) of the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source generates neutrons by colliding protons with a water-cooled Tantalum-clad Tungsten target. Protons accelerated to 80% of the speed of light at ISIS produce neutron scattering for atomic-scale material property measurement in medicine and engineering. TS2, composed of Tungsten with a Tantalum casing and water cooling channels, experiences periodic temperature changes upon proton beam impact, limiting its lifespan due to thermo-mechanical stresses that arise from the spallation process. Using FEniCS, the aim is to model the phenomena that arise in this scenario and couple it with CFD programs to consider cooling channels’ effects, emphasizing portability for high performance computing and ease of use. The viability is assessed for open-source finite element solvers to model the thermo-mechanical stresses. Simple benchmarking calculations are performed and presented to test the applicability of FEniCS and MOOSE Framework to the modelling of more complex geometries found with the target.
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Gould et al. (2025) studied this question.
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