Analysis of Electromagnetic Loads on the Vacuum Vessel during Thermal Quench in the TRT Tokamak

Abstract

The analysis is performed of electromagnetic loads on the vacuum vessel ("wall") of the TRT tokamak during thermal quench. The calculations are performed using the DINA code. The rapid thermal quench and subsequent plasma evolution are considered. The tokamak is treated as axially symmetric and the wall is modeled by a set of ring conductors. Accordingly, only the toroidal currents induced in the wall and the forces associated with them are taken into account. For such formulation of the problem, it is shown that, after the thermal quench, the total radial force acting on the TRT vacuum vessel is approximately 8 MN, being approximately 17% lower than the analytical estimates. This force is non-uniformly distributed along the poloidal contour; its local maxima are 2.8 times higher than the average level. Therefore, such loads should be taken into account when designing the TRT tokamak.