Results of CMM standalone tests at DTP2

Abstract

A full scale physical test facility, DTP2 (Divertor Test Platform 2) has been established in Finland for demonstrating and refining the Remote Handling (RH) equipment designs for ITER. The first prototype RH equipment at DTP2 is the Cassette Multifunctional Mover (CMM) equipped with the Second Cassette End Effector (SCEE) delivered to DTP2 in October 2008. The purpose is to prove that CMM/SCEE prototype can be used successfully for the 2nd cassette RH operations. At the end of F4E grant “DTP2 test facility operation and upgrade preparation”, the RH operations of the 2nd cassette were successfully demonstrated to the representatives of Fusion for Energy (F4E). During the grant the High Level Control (HLC) software developed at DTP2 was integrated with the CMM/SCEE hardware. The performance criteria of the CMM/SCEE equipment were defined based on the ‘EN ISO 9283 Manipulating industrial robots – Performance criteria and related test methods’ standard. Considerable improvement to the performance was achieved with the aid of compensation functions, which took into account the deflections and the compliance effects caused by the Divertor Cassette weighting 9000 kg. According to measurements the positioning error at the furthest point of the cassette was reduced from 80 mm to 5 mm. So far the 2nd cassette mock-up has been installed and removed already some tens of times. The reliability of the HLC software is sufficient to operate the CMM/SCEE all day without interruptions. Also the execution of the automatic RH processes with the overall RH system is reliable and repeatable in terms of accuracy and cycle time. These experiments provide a solid basis for investigating the RH system ability to perform fail-safe operations in various failure scenarios and to recover from them. The target of the continuing R&D is to find out a more complete set of functional and non-functional requirements for the RH system for Divertor Cassette maintenance to ensure an adequate level of requirements and procedures for ITER.