Two Key Improvements to Enhance the Thermo-mechanic Performances of Accelerator Grids for Neutral Beam Injectors

The MITICA experiment (Megavolt ITER Injector & Concept Advancement) is the prototype and the test bed of the Heating and Current Drive Neutral Beam Injectors (HNB), which will be necessary for the full-performance exploitation of ITER. MITICA injector experiments shall demonstrate the reliable and accurate emission of a 17 MW beam of neutral particles for duration up to 1 hour, fulfilling ITER specific requirements. The accelerator grids are among the most critical parts of this experiment, because they must fulfill several operational requirements and at the same time satisfy the fatigue verifications according to the ITER Structural Design Criteria for In-vessel Components (SDC-IC). After about two years of continuous development with several tested solutions, two methods were found to effectively increase the fatigue life of the grids up to requested values. The first method was to adopt a novel shape of the cooling channels inside the grids, called Nozzle Island Cooling Enhancement (NICE) and able to provide a high performance cooling without exceeding the limits on the pressure drop through the grids. The second method, called Strain Relieving Slits (SRS), was to introduce suitable slits in the grids, whose design was iteratively optimized until they were able to dramatically reduce the stress peaks due to thermal gradients. The NICE and SRS methods, here described in detail, were found to be key improvements in order to obtain a design of the grids able to satisfy all the operating requirements and all the structural verifications according to the ITER criteria.