Thermal-hydraulic simulation of IFMIF-DONES Test Cell atmosphere

Abstract

The test cell (TC) serves as irradiation chamber in the IFMIF-DONES facility, which aims to irradiate material samples with a highly energetic deuterium-lithium based neutron source to contribute to the development of candidate materials to be used in the first wall components of future fusion reactors. The TC provides space for several sub-systems and their components and it is filled with helium on sub-atmospheric pressure during normal operation. The internal components as well as the wall of the TC are exposed to volumetric heat load coming from the radiation and some of them have active heating/cooling. The internal flow of the atmosphere induced by natural convection and the various thermal state of the components consists of a complex, thermally strongly coupled system. An integrated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation has been developed in OpenFOAM solver, in order to provide a consistent approach for the design of the heating/cooling sub-systems of the TC components, as well as to estimate the heat load on the passively cooled structures. Additionally, such an integrated solution gives better understanding and consistency check of the separate sub-systems simulations. The purpose of this paper is to describe the current status of this simulation model, as well as analyzing the thermal condition of the TC during normal operation, considering that the different part and sub-systems have different level of design maturity.