Argon bubble flow in liquid gallium in external magnetic field

Dynamic neutron imaging of argon bubble flow in liquid gallium in external magnetic field

This paper presents detailed results of neutron imaging of argon bubble flows in a rectangular liquid gallium vessel with and without the application of external horizontal magnetic field. The developed image processing algorithm is presented and its capability to extract physical information from images of low signal-to-noise ratio is demonstrated. Bubble parameters, velocity components, trajectories and relevant statistics were computed and analysed. A simpler version of the code was applied to the output of computational fluid dynamics simulations that reproduced the experiment. This work serves to further validate the neutron radiography as a suitable method for monitoring gas bubble fl…

Resolving gas bubbles ascending in liquid metal from low-SNR neutron radiography images

We demonstrate a new image processing methodology for resolving gas bubbles travelling through liquid metal from dynamic neutron radiography images with an intrinsically low signal-to-noise ratio. Image pre-processing, denoising and bubble segmentation are described in detail, with practical recommendations. Experimental validation is presented—stationary and moving reference bodies with neutron-transparent cavities are radiographed with imaging conditions representative of the cases with bubbles in liquid metal. The new methods are applied to our experimental data from previous and recent imaging campaigns, and the performance of the methods proposed in this paper is compared against our p…

Phase boundary dynamics of bubble flow in a thick liquid metal layer under an applied magnetic field

Dynamic neutron radiography is used to observe the effect of a transverse magnetic field on argon bubbles rising through a thick layer of liquid gallium without interactions with the container walls.