ITER Port Plug Engineering Trainee Program: Design, manufacturing and integration of structural components (analysis of the attachment)

The structural connection of helium cooled plasma facing components in ITER to the water cooled structural port plug shield requires an attachment system, which is able to cope with two main contradicting requirements: The attachment system has to be rigid in order to withstand mechanical loads, e.g. due to the deadweight or static and transient electro-magnetic loads. On the other hand, the attachment system has to be flexible in order to compensate the different thermal strains in between the plasma facing test devices (300–550 °C) and the port plug structure (∼120 °C). The paper presents the latest developments of an attachment system consisting of flexible attachment blocks with lamellae. The optimization steps as well as the connection to the shield are described. The results of the thermo-mechanical analyses under a defined worst-case scenario confirm the feasibility of the lamella design. This work has been performed in the frame of the EFDA goal orientated trainee program on port plug engineering.