Bases for dust mobilization modelling in the light of STARDUST experiments

Abstract

This paper deals with the analysis of the first series of the experiments for the studies on the mobilization of tungsten dusts performed in the facility Small Tank for Aerosol Removal and Dust (STARDUST) located in the ENEA FUS laboratories in Frascati (Rome). These experiments have been carried on in the frame of the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) for the safety research activities on nuclear fusion plants. Furthermore, simulations of these resuspension experiments have been performed with the CESI and EdF ECART code to foresee the dust mobilization behavior and employing also the FLUENT Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) package to perform 3D analysis of the velocity fields inside the facility. The investigation of the phenomena by means of the ECART code will allow, in the future, to perform Best Estimate (BE) safety analysis of the dust mobilization inside the vacuum vessel (VV) of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), because the results obtained have a fear agreement with the experimental ones. In the paper, the description of the ECART dust resuspension model and the code results are also presented, together with the experimental data obtained for the series of the experiments carried out employing a tungsten dust, at a low pressurization rate (300 Pa/s), to simulate a loss of vacuum accident (LOVA) inside ITER due to a small air leak at the divertor port level.