Structural damages prevention of the ITER vacuum vessel and ports by elasto-plastic analysis with regards to RCC-MR

• Published in: Fusion engineering and design 2015-10, Vol.98-99, p.1552-1555
• Main Authors: Martinez, Jean-Marc, Jun, Chang Hoon, Portafaix, Christophe, Alekseev, Alexander, Sborchia, Carlo, Choi, Chang-Ho, Albin, Vincent, Borrelly, Stephane, Cambazar, Magali, Gaucher, Thomas, Sfarni, Samir, Tailhardat, Olivier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Constants; Crack propagation; Damage; Elastic limit; Elasto-plasticity; ITER; Ports; RCC-MR; Structural damage; Structural integrity; Vacuum vessel; Vessels
• ISSN: 0920-3796; 1873-7196
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fusengdes.2015.06.159

•ITER vacuum vessel (VV) is a part of the first barrier to confine the plasma.•ITER VV as NPE necessitates a third party organization authorized by the French nuclear regulator to assure design, fabrication, and conformance testing and quality assurance, i.e. ANB.•Several types of damages have to be prevented in order to guarantee the structural integrity with regards to RCC-MR.•It is usual to employ non-linear analysis when the “classical” elastic analysis reaches its limit of linear application.•Several structural analyses were performed with many different global and local models of the whole ITER VV. Several types of damages have to be prevented in order to guarantee the structural integrity of a structure with regards to RCC-MR; the P-type damages which can result from the application to a structure of a steadily and regularly increasing loading or a constant loading and the S-type damages during operational loading conditions which can only result from repeated application of loadings associated to the progressive deformations and fatigue. Following RCC-MR, the S-type damages prevention has to be started only when the structural integrity is guaranteed against P-type damages. The verification of the last one on the ITER vacuum vessel and ports has been performed by limit analysis with elasto-(perfectly)plastic material behavior. It is usual to employ non-linear analysis when the “classical” elastic analysis reaches its limit of linear application. Some elasto-plastic analyses have been performed considering several cyclic loadings to evaluate also more realistic structural margins of the against S-type damages.