Design and structural analysis of support structure for ITER vacuum vessel

Takeda, Nobukazu; Omori, Junji*; Nakahira, Masataka; Shibanuma, Kiyoshi

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 41(12), p.1280 - 1286, 2004/12

https://doi.org/10.1080/18811248.2004.9726357

The vibration experiments of the support structures with flexible plates for the ITER major components such as toroidal field coil and vacuum vessel were performed using small-sized flexible plates aiming to obtain its basic mechanical characteristics such as dependence of the stiffness on the loading angle. The experimental results obtained by the hammering and frequency sweep tests were agreed each other, so that the experimental method is found to be reliable. In addition, the experimental results were compared with the analytical ones in order to estimate an adequate analytical model. As a result, the bolt connection strongly affected on the stiffness of the support structure. After studies of modeling the bolts, it is found that the analytical results modeling the bolts with finite stiffness only in the axial direction and infinite stiffness in the other directions agree well with the experimental ones. Using this model, the stiffness of the support structure for the ITER major components can be calculated precisely in order to estimate the dynamic behaviors.