Thermo-mechanical analysis of Wendelstein 7-X plasma facing components

Improved Design and Thermo-Mechanical Verification of Deflection Magnet Beam Collimator of EAST-NBI System

The deflection magnet (DM) is the most important component of the Neutral Beam Injection (NBI) system of Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which can magnetically deflect the un-neutralized charged particles after the neutralized process of the beam is extracted from the ion source, and then form a neutral beam injected into the tokamak. Under the operating conditions of the NBI system, by using the thermocouple monitoring system in the experiment, it can be found that the currently operating DM beam collimator has a quite high temperature rise. It is necessary to redesign the DM beam collimator to improve its heat transfer performance. The parallel arrangement of multiple rows of tubes is proposed as the basic method for the redesign of the beam collimator of DM, the thermal-fluid-structure analysis model of this redesign model is established and its temperature field, pressure field and stress field are analyzed. Taking the surface temperature of the beam collimator, the overall dimension after the total tube combination and the pressure drop of the whole structure of collimator as the optimization objectives, and setting the fluid velocity, the tube’s inner diameter and the number of tube rows as the design variables, the optimized design scheme of the beam collimator structure is obtained. From the results of simulation, the new structure can better meet the operation requirements of DM, and its maximum temperature rise is well controlled, which is expected to meet the long pulse operation requirements of the NBI system. The proposed simulation and design optimization method can provide a certain reference for the design and optimization of other high-heat-flux structures in complex large-scale neutral beam systems in the future.

Detecting divertor damage during steady state operation of Wendelstein 7-X from thermographic measurements

Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) aims to demonstrate the reactor capability of the stellarator concept, by creating plasmas with pulse lengths of up to 30 min at a heating power of up to 10 MW. The divertor plasma facing components will see convective steady state heat flux densities of up to 10 MW/m(2). These high heat flux target elements are actively cooled and are covered with carbon fibre reinforced carbon (CFC) as plasma facing material. The CFC is bonded to the CuCrZr cooling structure. Over the life time of the experiment this interface may weaken and cracks can occur, greatly reducing the heat conduction between the CFC tile and the cooling structure. Therefore, there is not only the need to monitor the divertor to prevent damage by overheating but also the need to detect these fatigue failures of the interface. A method is presented for an early detection of fatigue failures of the interface layer, solely by using the information delivered by the IR-cameras monitoring the divertor. This was developed and validated through experiments made with high heat flux target elements prior to installation in W7-X.