Speaker
Description
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is currently developing and building a commercially relevant fusion energy machine that will produce more energy than is put into it (SPARC). In this research, an insulation that electrically isolates the toroidal field (TF) magnets from each other is being tested to determine its behavior, evolution, and failure rate during the shear displacement and high contact pressures that are expected to occur in SPARC. SPARC is a bucked tokamak and very compact making the insulation a challenge for our approach.
In this poster, we will discuss the test stand designed for the insulation with a newly developed custom vacuum chamber capable of applying up to 1GPa of contact pressure between insulation layers and reaching temperatures of 80K with pressures below 1e-4 torr. The test can be run over a total of 13,000 cycles at a rate of 0.1Hz. Contact pressures, coefficient of friction, and more can be measured in real time while testing.
