Improvement of non destructive infrared test bed SATIR for examination of actively cooled tungsten armour Plasma Facing Components

For steady state (magnetic) thermonuclear fusion devices which need large power exhaust capability and have to withstand heat fluxes in the range 10–20 MW m−2, advanced Plasma Facing Components (PFCs) have been developed. The importance of PFCs for operating tokamaks requests to verify their manufacturing quality before mounting. SATIR is an IR test bed validated and recognized as a reliable and suitable tool to detect cooling defaults on PFCs with CFC armour material. Current tokamak developments implement metallic armour materials for first wall and divertor; their low emissivity causes several difficulties for infrared thermography control. We present SATIR infrared thermography test bed improvements for W monoblocks components without defect and with calibrated defects. These results are compared to ultrasonic inspection. This study demonstrates that SATIR method is fully usable for PFCs with low emissivity armour material.