Elastic stress waves of cylindrical rods subjected to rapid energy deposition

Rapid energy deposition into targets and beam absorbers in a high-energy accelerator leads to a temperature rise at an enormous rate, giving rise to thermally induced stress waves. Understanding and predicting the resulting stresses are crucial for robust design and safe operation of such devices. In this paper, closed-form expressions for the induced stresses in cylindrical rods subjected to rapid partial energy deposition have been directly derived; they are then used to estimate the highest stress of long cylindrical absorbers and to test the accuracy of thermal shock simulation using finite element analysis (FEA) codes. Characteristics of such stresses were discussed in detail. It was found that ANSYS may produce accurate details in thermal shock simulation if element size and time step used in the simulation model meet the criteria proposed by Zheng and co-workers in another paper.