Thermal shock experiment of beryllium exposed to intense high energy proton beam pulses

Beryllium is a material extensively used in various particle accelerator beam lines and target facilities, as beam windows and, to a lesser extent, as secondary particle production targets. With increasing beam intensities of future multimegawatt accelerator facilities, these components will have to withstand even greater thermal and mechanical loads during operation. As a result, it is critical to understand the beam-induced thermal shock limit of beryllium to help reliably operate these components without having to compromise particle production efficiency by limiting beam parameters. As part of the RaDIATE (radiation damage in accelerator target environments) Collaboration, an exploratory experiment to probe and investigate the thermomechanical response of several candidate beryllium grades was carried out at CERN’s HiRadMat facility, a user facility capable of delivering very-high-intensity proton beams to test accelerator components. Multiple arrays of thin beryllium disks of varying thicknesses and grades, as well as thicker cylinders, were exposed to increasing beam intensities to help identify any thermal shock failure threshold. Real-time experimental measurements and postirradiation examination studies provided data to compare the response of the various beryllium grades, as well as benchmark a recently developed beryllium Johnson-Cook strength model.