MECHANICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ITER MOCK-UP INSULATION AFTER REACTOR IRRADIATION

The ITER mock‐up project was launched in order to demonstrate the feasibility of an industrial impregnation process using the new cyanate ester/epoxy blend. The mock‐up simulates the TF winding pack cross section by a stainless steel structure with the same dimensions as the TF winding pack at a length of 1 m. It consists of 7 plates simulating the double pancakes, each of them is wrapped with glass fiber/Kapton sandwich tapes. After stacking the 7 plates, additional insulation layers are wrapped to simulate the ground insulation. This paper presents the results of the mechanical quality tests on the mock‐up pancake insulation. Tensile and short beam shear specimens were cut from the plates extracted from the mock‐up and tested at 77 K using a servo‐hydraulic material testing device. All tests were repeated after reactor irradiation to a fast neutron fluence of 1×1022 m−2 (E>0.1 MeV). In order to simulate the pulsed operation of ITER, tension‐tension fatigue measurements were performed in the load control...