Thermal Management of Wide-Beam Area X-Ray Sources

A wide-beam area X-ray source has been envisioned as capable of delivering X-ray radiation similar to a synchrotron source in terms of the magnitude of photon flux, energy range, and collimation for clinical Diffraction Enhanced Imaging (DEI) applications. Since most of the electron beam energy used to generate the X-rays is deposited in the target material as heat, a cooling system which ensures adequate thermal management is critical to the design. Previous work has shown the feasibility of a prototype scale target with heat fluxes equivalent to those envisioned for an industrial scale system. In this study, a cooling system for an industrial scale target is proposed which is capable of handling a maximum uniform heat flux of 11.693 × 10 6  W/ m 2 for a total thermal loading of 180 kW (3 Amp beam current at 60 kV accelerating voltage). The target behavior was simulated using the CFD code, ANSYS CFX. The simulation results show that target integrity can be maintained for highly non uniform heat fluxes with moderate coolant velocities and pumping powers.