SUMMARY
Liquid jets are used in order to protect cavity walls of nuclear reactors such as the Z-Pinch IFE from the target x-rays, ions, and neutrons. The liquid jets will attenuate radiation, which will increase the lifetime of the cavity walls. However, the shock waves produced from rapidly heating and cooling the liquid jets are difficult to contain within the small confines of the reactor cavity, which is due to the near incompressibility of the water. One solution to this problem is to use a two-phase, gas-liquid jet. The compressibility of the two-phase jet allows for attenuation of the shock waves while still providing a means of protection for the cavity walls from the radiation. The high operating pressure of the Z-Pinch IFE reactor allows for introduction of the gas into the flow without excessively increasing the pumping requirements. It is important to understand the hydrodynamic phenomena of two-phase flow. There are many different models of two-phase flow with varying assumptions and some are analytic, semi-analytic, or empirical. The geometry and orientation of the flow precludes most empirical existing models from being used unless the specific geometry and orientation of the jet has already been studied. There is a scarcity of investigations regarding plane two-phase, downward flowing jets. The objective of this thesis was to investigate the hydrodynamic behavior of downward-flowing plane two-phase flow jets. The jet stability and the evolution of void fraction along the jet were of primary interest.