A Study on Accelerated Life Evaluation of Prefabricated Target of Deuterium-Tritium Neutron Tubes

Neutron tube has become a key component that restricts the development of many industries, and service life evaluation is one of the key technologies in urgent need during the development of the neutron tube. In this paper, the prefabricated target which is a principal aspect determining the service life of the deuterium-tritium neutron tube was focused on. A conservative degradation test and accelerated life evaluation methodology of the prefabricated target was proposed based on the cumulative failure mechanism of the bombardment and sputtering damage caused by high-energy deuterium-tritium ions during operation. The evaluation method was verified for the service life of the prefabricated target of neutron tubes for online inspection analysis and neutron logging. A linear-exponential coupled model was proposed to perform the regression analysis of the neutron yield. The service life of the prefabricated target of the neutron tube was predicted. The results show that the degradation test and accelerated life evaluation methodology proposed in this paper can greatly shorten the life test time of the prefabricated target of the neutron tube. The service life of the prefabricated target of the deuterium-tritium neutron tube used in laboratory in this paper is 3033.63±71.68 hours at the yield of 5×10
⁷
neutrons per second at room temperature condition and 556.04±100.08 hours at the yield of 3×10
⁸
neutrons per second at 175 degrees centigrade.