Evaluation of inter-laminar shear strength of GFRP composed of bonded glass/polyimide tapes and cyanate-ester/epoxy blended resin for ITER TF coils

Hemmi, Tsutomu; Nishimura, Arata*; Matsui, Kunihiro; Koizumi, Norikiyo; Nishijima, Shigehiro*; Shikama, Tatsuo*

Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), as Japan Domestic Agency, has responsibility to procure 9 ITER Toroidal Field (TF) coils. The insulation system of the ITER TF coils consists of 3 layers of insulations, which are a conductor insulation, a double-pancake (DP) insulation and a ground insulation, composed of multi-layer glass/polyimide tapes impregnated a resin. The ITER TF coils are required to withstand an irradiation of 10 MGy from -ray and neutrons since the ITER TF coils is exposed by first neutron ( 0.1 MeV) of 10 n/m during the operation of 20 years in the ITER. Cyanate-ester/epoxy blended resins and bonded glass/polyimide tapes are developed as insulation materials to realize the required radiation-hardness for the insulation of the ITER TF coils. To evaluate the radiation-hardness of the developed insulation materials, the inter-laminar shear strength of glass-fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP) fabricated using developed insulation materials is measured as one of most important mechanical properties before/after the irradiation in a fission reactor of JRR-3. As a result, it is demonstrated that the GFRPs using the developed insulation materials have a sufficient performance to apply the ITER TF coil insulation.