ITER blanket manifold final design and validation

Abstract The Final Design Review for the Blanket Manifold (MA) was successfully held in December 2015. A concerted effort has been necessary to finalise the multi-pipe design, verification by analysis and practical validation to address challenging design requirements, and installation/maintenance processes. The MA provides cooling water to the Blanket System with a nominal inlet pressure and temperature of 4.0 MPa and 70 °C, respectively. The return circuits differ in temperatures by up to 40 °C, which induces shear stress in neighbouring fixed pipe supports. The pipe to support interface has to accommodate conflicting requirements. It has to provide good thermal conductance in order to remove the neutronic heating while electrically insulated to mitigate excessive electromagnetic loads. The thermal expansion due to the average increase of outlet water temperature is accommodated by compliant support legs. Customised design features for both initial installation and subsequent remote maintenance have been introduced to accommodate the as built VV mounting points. This paper provides details as to how the design has mitigated the conflicting requirements, analysis verification, practical validation of design choices and the achievable build tolerances.