Engineering support in the area of civil engineering analysis at ITER

France

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) aims to show that nuclear fusion can be a viable future energy source. The budget of the project has reached €15 billion and it is jointly financed by China, USA, India, Korea, Japan and the European Union. In the context of the framework contract F4E-2008-OPE-011 “Support in the area of civil engineering and structural analysis”, several activities involving structural analyses for the design, optimization and licensing of the ITER nuclear buildings have been carried out since 2009 for the three lots involved.

Within the Lot 1, IDOM carried out seismic analyses to three major components: Ion Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ICRH) antenna, Test Blanket System (TBS) pipeline supports and Tokamak machine globally.

As far as the Lot 2 is concerned, it was related to explosions and impacts whereas in Lot 3 analyses of ITER buildings (Tokamak Building among others) were conducted. These works involved extensive finite element modelling and analyses with CATIA, ANSYS and ABAQUS performing a variety of non-linear calculations. A set of experimental tests of deformable and rigid bodies impacting reinforced concrete panels at high speeds have been studied numerically in order to use the actual test results for validation.

Fusion