Numerical analysis of magnetoelastic buckling of fusion reactor components

This paper describes a numerical analysis of the buckling of fusion reactor components, resulting from electromagnetic loads. An analysis method for the calculation of the dynamic electromagnetically coupled buckling is proposed, where the geometrical non-linearity, the magnetic damping and the magnetic stiffness effects are taken into consideration. In the cases of the analysis of a shallow arch, the numerical results agreed well with the experimental results. The comparison showed that the inclusion of the geometrical non-linearity and the magnetic stiffness in the analysis is evidently necessary for good agreement. The analysis of the ITER vacuum vessel showed that, in the case of plasma disruption, the possiblity of electromagnetic buckling of the ITER vessel is very small under the conceptual design activity condition.