Development of the ICRF Antenna for the Next Step Fusion Reactor ITER
The effort of many engineers and scientists is to demonstrate the feasibility of heating the plasma in the Next Step fusion reactor by means of RF waves. At this purpose new antenna prototypes have been developing for the JET and TORE SOUPRA fusion machines. The finite element code ANSYS has been used to perform several analyses because it takes into account different physical aspects of the same problem, allowing coupled analyses. Electromagnetic transient and harmonic analyses have permitted to determine the induced and high frequency currents. Eddy currents, which are due to disruption events, cause electro-dynamic loads on the antenna because they interact with the static magnetic field components. A mechanical analysis has been performed to compute stress, displacements values and resultant forces and moments in all parts of the structure. High frequency electromagnetic analyses have allowed to optimise all the high frequency circuit components by computing the electric and magnetic field distributions and the scattering parameters. The thermal loads due to the high frequency currents have been transferred in thermal models and the temperature distribution computed.