LTC for Thermonuclear fusion

LTCalcoli has a consolidated experience in the analysis and support to the design of reactors for thermonuclear fusion.

This experience has been built thanks to a strong long-term partnership with:

• ENEA (National Authority for Alternative Energy),
• ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor),
• Fusion for Energy (F4E EURATOM agency for the management of the ITER Project in the European Union),
• IPP - W7X (Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics which is building the fusion reactor called the W7-X)
• CNR (Italian National Research Council)

The technical and professional knowledge necessary to carry out this type of activity include several areas where overlap computational electromagnetics, computational mechanics and engineering of thermonuclear fusion.

The LTCalcoli has been involved in the design of various nuclear fusion reactors and their components. Among them:
• ITER
• IGNITOR (High Field Tokamak Machine)
• W7-X
• JET (European Tokamak Machine installed and operating at Oxford)
• FTU (Frascati Tokamak Upgrade place in ENEA Frascati)
• DEMO (Evolution of ITER)

For all of these reactors, different aspects of the project were analyzed by LTCalcoli team: from the feedback of parasites to the thermo-structural analysis and the electromagnetic optimization. In recognition of his expertise, LTCalcoli has also contributed to the revision of the design of various reactor components, including the divertor, the toroidal field coil, the Winding Pack of ITER and the vacuum chamber wall and the First IGNITOR.

In particular, in the field of thermo-structural analysis and design optimization, LTCalcoli has conducted a detailed analysis of the main components of nuclear fusion reactors applying different procedures:

- evaluation of the effect of the deposition of neutron heat and heat fluxes from the plasma thanks to transient thermal analysis;

- static and dynamic analysis, elastic and elasto-plastic analysis for different load conditions: weight, pre-load, thermal load due to the deposition of neutron heat and heat fluxes from the plasma, electromagnetic loads;

- seismic analysis; 

- fatigue analysis with low number of cycles;

- structural testing to various standards such as the SDC-IC, ASME, RCC-MR and others.

In the field of engineering of plasma, electromagnetic numerical codes have been developed for the analysis of:
• consumption of the flow of Plasma;
• plasma scenarios;
• disruption of Plasma.

In this regard, LTCalcoli has also developed and well-validated (eg on blanket modules and the ITER divertor) a procedure of electromagnetic "zoom" number that allows you to extract, from a complex electromagnetic system, the excitation provided on a subsystem. With this method it's possible a more detailed analysis of the electromagnetic component by a development of the model of the single component.