Shock Loading of IFE Reactor Cooling Tubes

Many inertial confinement fusion (ICF) reactor designs incorporate a bank of cooling tubes as the first structural wall. These tubes provide important functions such as heat transfer and fuel breeding and must endure the cyclic impact of the shock waves formed from reaction of the fuel. Shock tube experiments and parallel numerical studies are conducted for shock waves incident on banks of instrumented cylinders meant to simulate the first wall of cooling tubes. Images of diffracted shocks, cylinder surface pressure traces, and calculated force distributions describe the interaction between the shock and the bank of cylinders. The numerical model shows good agreement with the experimental data.