High-speed surface temperature measurements on plasma facing materials for fusion applications

Abstract

For the lifetime evaluation of plasma facing materials in fusion experimental machines, it is essential to investigate their surface behavior and their temperature responses during an off-normal event such as the plasma disruptions. An infrared thermometer with a sampling speed as fast as 1×10−6 s/data, namely, the high-speed infrared thermometer (HSIR), has been developed by the National Research Laboratory of Metrology in Japan. To evaluate an applicability of the newly developed HSIR on the surface temperature measurement of plasma facing materials, high heat flux beam irradiation experiments have been performed with three different materials under the surface heat fluxes up to 170 MW/m2 for 0.04 s in a hydrogen ion beam test facility at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. As for the results, HSIR can be applicable for measuring the surface temperature responses of the armor tile materials with a little modification. It is also confirmed that surface temperatures measured with the HSIR thermometer show good agreement with the analytical results for stainless steel and carbon based materials at a temperature range of up to 2500 °C. However, for aluminum the HSIR could measure the temperature of the high dense vapor cloud which was produced during the heating due to lower melting temperature. Based on the result, a multichannel arrayed HSIR thermometer has been designed and fabricated.