A new method for characterizing the heat transfer capacity of the divertor and high heat flux components

Abstract

The divertor is usually exposed to extreme incident heat flux conditions in nuclear fusion engineering and its ability to remove the heat is extremely crucial for the safe operation of magnetic confinement nuclear fusion device. The evaluation of the heat removal capacity of the divertor has been always based on high heat flux (HHF) tests. Yet such methods are only available for the small size of experimental components, it is more difficult to compare under different loading and cooling conditions. In order to assess the heat removal capacity in real time and accurately, a new method was developed to characterize the heat removal capacity of the divertor and other high heat load components based on the cooling water thermal decay time constant, the time constants model has also been established. The thermal decay time constant was obtained by fitting the characteristic curves of the water temperature differences with time during the cooling phase of different components under HHF tests. This index is used to quantitatively analyze, characterize and evaluate the heat transfer capacity of the system of the divertor.