Main mechanical and thermal loads and stresses of the FTU machine

Abstract

The FTU tokamak will have to operate steadily at high magnetic fields in order to reach the expected performance. Its magnet and vacuum chamber, due to thermal and electromagnetic loads, will undergo very high stresses for a large number of shots.

In order to assess the feasibility of the components, numerical codes to compute current, magnetic field and temperature distributions, and extensive three dimensional finite element stress analysis have been developed. The main results obtained are illustrated.