Molecular simulation study of the effect of iron clusters on the viscosity of liquid lithium

doi:10.7523/j.ucas.2021.0062

Abstract

Abstract: Liquid lithium has a wide range of applications in magnetic confinement fusion devices, such as blanket, divertor, etc. Due to the active physical and chemical properties of liquid lithium, its compatibility with structural materials has always been one of the important issues in the field of nuclear fusion. Considering that stainless steel is usually used as the structural material of the liquid lithium circuit in engineering, the compatibility between lithium and iron has attracted the attention of many scholars. In view of this, the molecular dynamics method was used to simulate the liquid lithium containing iron clusters. The effects of iron clusters on the viscosity of liquid lithium and the micromechanism were analyzed. The effects of cluster size, shape, and concentration were investigated. The results show that the presence of iron clusters can significantly change the viscosity of liquid lithium, and the viscosity gradually increases with the increase of cluster size. The cluster shape also has a certain effect on the viscosity. Under the condition of the same volume, the larger the surface area, the greater the effect. In addition, we have also developed a computational model for the viscosity of nanofluid, which can well fit the simulation results of molecular dynamics.

Key words: molecular dynamics (MD), viscosity, diffusion coefficient, Fe-Li nanofluid, liquid lithium

CLC Number:

O551.3

XU Bo, LIU Songchang, YU Xingang. Molecular simulation study of the effect of iron clusters on the viscosity of liquid lithium[J]. Journal of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2023, 40(2): 165-172.

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