Manufacturing and testing of a ITER First Wall Semi-Prototype for EUDA pre-qualification

• Published in: Fusion engineering and design Vol. 98-99; pp. 1211 - 1215
• Main Authors: Banetta, S., Bellin, B., Lorenzetto, P., Zacchia, F., Boireau, B., Bobin, I., Boiffard, P., Cottin, A., Nogue, P., Mitteau, R., Eaton, R., Raffray, R., Bürger, A., Du, J., Linke, J., Pintsuk, G., Weber, T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.10.2015
• Subjects: Fingers; Heat flux; Heat transfer; High Heat Flux testing; Hot Isostatic Pressing; ITER First Wall; Manufacturing; Manufacturing engineering; Panels; Prototypes; Tiles; Walls; Hot Isostatic Pressing; Manufacturing; High Heat Flux testing; ITER First Wall
• ISSN: 0920-3796; 1873-7196
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fusengdes.2015.01.016

•Three ITER First Wall Small Scale Mock-ups were manufactured passing factory acceptance tests.•One of the Small Scale Mock-ups passed the thermal fatigue tests (15,000 cycles at 2MW/m2).•The ITER First Wall Semi-Prototype was manufactured and is being High Heat Flux tested.•Preliminary results upto 2MW/m2 show an overall compliance with the acceptance criteria.•Next step for EU Domestic Agency qualification is the fabrication and testing of a Full-Scale Prototype. This paper describes the main activities carried out in the frame of EU-DA prequalification for the supply of Normal Heat Flux (NHF) First Wall (FW) panels to ITER. A key part of these activities is the manufacturing development, the fabrication and the factory acceptance tests of a reduced scale FW prototype (Semi-Prototype (SP)) of the NHF design. The SP has a dimension of 221mm×665mm, corresponding to about 1/6 of a full-scale panel, with six full-scale “fingers” and bearing a total of 84 beryllium tiles. It has been manufactured by the AREVA Company in France. The manufacturing process has made extensive use of Hot Isostatic Pressing, which was developed over more than a decade during the ITER Engineering Design Activity phase. The main manufacturing steps for the Semi-Prototype are recalled, with a summary of the lessons learned and the implications with regard to the design and manufacturing of the full-scale prototype and of the series fabrication of the EU-DA share of the ITER first wall (215 NHF panels). The fabricated SP is then tested under High Heat Flux (HHF) in the dedicated test facility of JUDITH-II in Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. The objective of the HHF testing is the demonstration of achieving the requested performance under thermal fatigue. The test protocol and facility qualification are presented and the behaviour of the fingers under the 7500 cycles at 2MW/m2 is described in detail.