DETAILED ELECTROMAGNETIC ANALYSES OF THE ITER IN ŠVESSEL COMPONENTS DURING PLASMA DISRUPTIONS

M. Roccella, M. Gasparotto, D. Lattanzi , C. Rita (a) -S. Chiocchio, F. Elio, N.Miki (b) - F. Lucca (c)

(a) ENEA-Associazione Euratom Enea sulla Fusione, Centro Ricerche Frascati, C.P. 65, 00044 Frascati, Rome, Italy
(b) ITER- JCT - Boltzmann Strasse 2, D- 85748 Garching, Germany
(c) ENEA consultant- c/o ENEA-Associazione Euratom Enea sulla Fusione, C.R. Frascati, C.P. 00044 Frascati, Rome, Italy

The Electromagnetic (EM) loads during plasma disruptions represent one of the main concern for the ITER in-Vessel components. To reduce their effects on the mechanical structures some changes on the blanket and divertor design have been recently introduced. Their effectiveness has been checked with a completely new electromagnetic analysis of the machine in which an entire toroidal sector of 18 degrees was modelled. The increased toroidal size of the model with respect to previous similar analyses, and the need to include more detailed representations of the blanket and the divertor, have prevented the use of one 3-D model comprehensive of all in-vessel structures. To overcome this difficulty, a zoom procedure has been developed, in which the results of the full coarse model are used as boundary conditions for the detailed 3-D EM analyses of the divertor cassettes and of the blanket modules. This approach has allowed to include enough details in the component models to correctly take into account of the field diffusion depths also in the most conductive materials. In order to evaluate the halo current distributions inside the passive structures and the currents induced by the plasma diamagnetism and paramagnetism decay a plasma model has been developed and the related EM loads have been calculated. The 3-D finite element code EMAS has been used for the main analyses. A large number of run have been performed to check the self consistence of the approximations used. A sensitivity study was made on the most critical features of the problem using the ANSYS code on a simplified shielding blanked model. All the main features shown by EMAS results have been confirmed. This paper describes the procedure and the models of the in-vessel structure and reports the main results of the EM analyses of the shielding blanket modules, the back plate and the divertor assembly. The effect of fast and slow plasma disruptions (including radial displacement) together with VDE driven plasma disruptions are reported and discussed. The results of these analyses have driven the selection of the design of the in-vessel structures. They also emphasize that detailed 3-D models of the plasma surrounding structures are essential if one wants to perform a quantitative assessment of important effects such as the push-pull forces induced by orthogonal field variations and the diffusion of the magnetic field through the small gaps between the modules.