Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279

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Fusion Engineering and Design

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CFD analysis of a regular sector of the ITER vacuum vessel. Part I:

Flow distribution and pressure drop
L. Savoldi Richard a , R. Bonifetto a , R. Zanino a,∗ , S. Corpino b , G. Obiols-Rabasa b ,
J. Izquierdo c , R. Le Barbier d , Y. Utin d
a
Dipartimento Energia, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
b
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Aerospaziale, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
c
F4E, Barcelona, Spain
d
ITER IO, Cadarache, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The 3D steady-state Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of the ITER vacuum vessel (VV) regular
Received 3 June 2013 sector #5 is presented, starting from the CATIA models and using a suite of tools from the commercial
Received in revised form software ANSYS FLUENT® . The peculiarity of the problem is linked to the wide range of spatial scales
23 September 2013
involved in the analysis, from the millimeter-size gaps between in-wall shielding (IWS) plates to the
Accepted 4 October 2013
more than 10 m height of the VV itself. After performing several simplifications in the geometrical details,
Available online 6 November 2013
a computational mesh with ∼50 million cells is generated and used to compute the steady-state pressure
and flow fields from a Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes model with SST k-␻ turbulence closure. The
Keywords:
Nuclear fusion
coolant mass flow rate turns out to be distributed 10% through the inboard and the remaining 90%
ITER through the outboard. The toroidal and poloidal ribs present in the VV structure constitute significant
Vacuum vessel barriers for the flow, giving rise to large recirculation regions. The pressure drop is mainly localized in
Thermal-hydraulics the inlet and outlet piping.
CFD © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The ITER vacuum vessel (VV) will be located inside the cryostat
and it will house the in-vessel components, providing a high quality
vacuum for the plasma and the first confinement barrier [1,2]. The
VV is a double-wall structure, see Fig. 1, where the volume between
the inner and outer shells is designed to allow the circulation of the
cooling water through a very complicated structure, including
• the in-wall shielding (IWS), see Fig. 2, made of borated stain-
less steel plates which, depending on the poloidal location, vary
in number from 3 to 9 in the thickness (the average size of the
gap between the plates is 0.004 m; the average size of the gap
between the first/last plate and the inner/outer shell, respec-
tively, is 0.042 m and 0.078 m; the average distance between
inner and outer shell is ∼0.371 m);
• the blanket support housings (BSH), with channel structure
inside, see Fig. 3a (the diameter of the BSH is ∼0.236 m, the diam-
eter of the cooling channels is ∼0.060 m);
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0110904490.
E-mail addresses: laura.savoldi@polito.it (L. Savoldi Richard),
roberto.zanino@polito.it (R. Zanino).
• the perforated poloidal and toroidal ribs (diameter of the pass-
ing holes ∼0.050 m for toroidal ribs, ∼0.050 m and 0.021 m for
poloidal ribs, see Fig. 3b), aimed at stiffening the structure;
• the inter-modular keys (IMK) with flow driver structure inside,
see Fig. 3c (side of the square IMK surface ∼0.320 m).
The VV is partitioned in 9 sectors, with three bands of ports
located on the outboard side. Each sector is actively cooled by pres-
surized sub-cooled water, entering from dedicated piping on the
lower port, flowing through the space left open within the IWS,
splitting between the inboard and the outboard part of the ves-
sel, and circulating also in the so-called Triangular Support (TrS) of
the lower blanket modules, before being routed through the upper
port frame to an exit pipe, see Fig. 1. Among the 9 sectors, 6 are
so-called regular sectors (RS) including the sector #5 considered
in the present analysis; these are distinguished from the so-called
irregular sectors by the fact that equatorial ports are “regular” and
not neutral beam (NB) ports, which have different structure and
position from the regular ports.
The complexity of the flow region means that the detailed VV
thermal-hydraulic analysis is not amenable to lumped parameter
modeling if accurate results are requested, while Computational
Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be very helpful. The use of CFD methods
for the thermal-hydraulic analysis of a tokamak VV was pioneered

0920-3796/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2013.10.003
 L. Savoldi Richard et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279
Fig. 1. Schematic view of the VV regular sector #5 (40◦ toroidally) with main flow
direction of the water coolant. The height of the outer shell is ∼11.5 m. The IWS is
not shown.
in KSTAR to investigate the thermal stress of the VV during the
baking period [3]. At that time the design of the ITER VV from
the thermal-hydraulic point of view was based on simple corre-
lations [4], but eventually, the CFD approach used for KSTAR was
Fig. 2. IWS in the OT segment: before (top) and after (bottom) the simplification
of the geometry (in blue the blanket support housings). (For interpretation of the
references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)
3273
Fig. 3. (a) Detail of a blanket support housing from the OB segment (left), with inter-
nal channel structure (right); (b) detail of a poloidal rib from the OB segment with
passing holes of different diameters (right side edge in contact with the connection
plate separating OB and Inb segments); (c) detail of an IMK (left), with internal flow
driver structure (right).
applied by the same authors to a global analysis of the ITER VV
[5,6].
In this paper we study the (pure) hydraulic problem of the
steady-state flow distribution and pressure drop in the ITER VV
under imposed coolant mass flow rate, using the commercial CFD
tool FLUENT (the same code was also used in [3,5,6]). The effect of
the nuclear heat load on the thermal-hydraulics of the coolant in
the ITER VV and in particular on the temperature distribution, is
considered in a companion paper [7].
With respect to the work previously published by other authors,
we consider here the most recent (July 2011) design of the VV RS
#5 available when this work was started. It should also be noted
that, when the last work on VV thermal-hydraulics was published,
it was considered very difficult or even impossible to use 3D CFD
analysis with fine mesh [5]. In the present two companion papers
the global analysis with fine mesh is performed (with the exception
of the simplifications discussed in Section 3), including for the first
time IMKs, BSHs and the TrS.
While the current status of the procurement of the VV is quite
advanced [8], the detailed thermal-hydraulic analysis presented in
these two companion papers is still relevant, not only from the the-
oretical point of view but also in practice, giving a clear view of the
temperature field in the VV inner shell and its structural compo-
nents, which is an important input to conclude on the adequacy of
the VV thermal-stress behavior.
2. Model
A Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) model with SST
k-␻ [9] turbulence closure was used to compute the steady-state
flow field and pressure drop in the VV. The SST k-␻ model belongs
to the family of the two-equation models, and it is a blend of the
3274 L. Savoldi Richard et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279
Fig. 4. Nomenclature adopted in the present paper for the different segments of the
VV RS #5.
k-␻ model, which is used near the walls, and the k-␧ model, which
is used in regions far from the walls. This model is known to be
robust and generally more or at least equally suitable to capture
detachment/recirculation regions than other two-equation models
[10,11]. Therefore it appears as a good choice for the thermal-
hydraulic analysis of the VV, since the fluid path is very tortuous
and many recirculation regions are present.
The software packages adopted for the present analysis are:
ANSYS ICEM 13.0 [12] for the geometry manipulation and mesh
generation; ANSYS FLUENT 13.0 [13,14] for the simulations; ANSYS
FLUENT 13.0 and ANSYS CFD-POST [15] for the post-processing.
3. Simplifications of the geometry
We started from the CATIA drawings provided to Politecnico
di Torino by F4E, as detailed in [16]. The RS #5 is divided in three
different segments as described in Fig. 4: the inboard (Inb) segment
and the two outboard, bottom (OB) and top (OT) segments. The TrS
is also included and separately treated.
The simplifications introduced in the original geometry, before
the actual meshing was started, may be distinguished between
major and minor. The major simplifications are:
(i) The 40◦ toroidal extension of the domain has been reduced to
20◦ , assuming symmetry at the mid poloidal plane (besides the
geometrical symmetry, two symmetric and independent water
loops with the same cooling capability are used to cool each of
the 9 sectors, and we could assume that the holes in the poloidal
rib separating the two halves are closed);
(ii) The fluid domain between inner and outer shell was simpli-
fied by collapsing to two the number of borated stainless steel
plates in the thickness, as shown in Fig. 2. The constraint in
this simplification was to maintain the distance from the shells
(since especially the inner shell is critical from the heat transfer
point of view, see [7]) and the total area of the local flow cross
section (i.e., also the IWS mass), while at the same time elimi-
nating the thin flat channels between the plates, which would
have been very expensive to handle from the computational
point of view. (Notice that the nuclear heat load on the IWS is
comparatively low, see [7], so that this structure does not need
to be described in a special detail.) Of course this simplifica-
tion cannot maintain at the same time the wetted perimeter,
so that the pressure drop on the VV inboard and outboard paths
shall not be exactly reproduced. However, it will be seen below
that the global pressure drop on the VV is dominated by inlet
and outlet piping. This simplification applies to both inboard
and outboard paths, but it may affect them differently, as in
the inboard the number of plates is minimum, whereas in the
outboard it varies between the minimum and the maximum.
Fig. 5. Computational fluid domain, with surface mesh details in the insets: fluid
domain in IMK #4 (top inset); inlet region in the lower port (bottom inset). The
toroidal ribs in the Inb segment are highlighted in the rectangle.
Therefore, the artificial reduction in wetted perimeter (i.e., the
increase in hydraulic diameter) associated to this simplification
is larger for the outboard; qualitatively, this implies that in the
flow repartition, the outboard fraction might be overestimated.
The minor simplifications involved the three segments and the
upper, equatorial and lower ports, as detailed in [16].
4. Mesh generation
In this paper the computational domain coincides with the fluid
domain, i.e., all solids are only considered as walls for the fluid.
The meshing process has been performed using ANSYS/ICEM
versions 13 and 14, based on the Octree algorithm [12].
The fluid domains in the three segments and in the TrS have been
meshed separately, for the sake of simplicity. The four sub-domains
have then been merged, properly matching the interfaces. The max-
imum global element seed size [12] was set to 256 mm (64 mm for
the TrS); the minimum element size for proximity/curvature-based
refinement was set to 8 mm; the maximum grid size of 16 mm was
adopted on the fluid surface (except in the TrS, where a finer mesh
was required). The mesh is made of tetrahedral and prisms. A global
scaling parameter of 1.15 has been adopted for all the tetrahedra.
The two insets in Fig. 5 shows the surface mesh on one IMK and a
detail of the (surface) mesh near the flow inlet section of the entire
RS, respectively.
A boundary layer of 5 prisms was extruded from the walls of the
OB, Inb and OT segments into the fluid volume, see Fig. 6. For the TrS
the layer was made of 15 prisms. While 10 layers are recommended
to “cover a boundary layer accurately” [14], a dedicated grid inde-
pendence analysis presented in the Appendix has confirmed the
suitability of our choice in the case at hand. The SST k-␻ turbu-
lence model adopts by default an enhanced wall treatment, and
the so-called y+ [14] has been kept as much as possible close to 1,
to provide an adequate resolution of the boundary layer.
The main features of the resulting mesh, in terms of type and
number of cells in the different computational sub-domains, are
reported in Table 1. The total size of the mesh of the fluid domain
sums up to ∼50 MCells, of which only ∼40% are tetrahedra. The
huge number of prisms resulting from the strategy described above
 L. Savoldi Richard et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279 3275

Fig. 6. Cross section of the mesh near the equatorial plane (Inb segment), showing
the 5 prism layers.

Table 1
Fluid mesh features.

Sub-domain Cell type # of MCells

OB Tetrahedra 6.64
Prisms 9.76
OT Tetrahedra 6.75
Prisms 11.57
Inb Tetrahedra 5.05 Fig. 7. Fluid pathlines from the flow inlet of the sector, colored by the velocity
Prisms 7.06 magnitude.
TrS Tetrahedra 1.77
Prisms 3.01
10◦ because of the presence of a poloidal rib with very few connect-
Total 51.61
ing holes. The latter half of the sector is cooled by the fluid returning
to the OB after entering the Inb segment, see Figs. 8 and 9.
is obviously due to the presence of a large number of narrow chan- Fig. 9 shows the fluid pathlines drawn forward from the Inb/OB
nels, which are mainly occupied by prisms only. connection plate. A significant portion of the pathlines recirculates
toward the OB, while only a small fraction penetrates the Inb, pass-
5. Simulation setup ing essentially all through a few holes on the Inb/OB connection
plate, which are the holes located on the same sector side as the
The run was conducted with a first order discretization setup, lower port, where the fluid inlet is located), see Fig. 7. Because of
using the SIMPLE pressure-velocity coupling scheme. In order to the presence of the two toroidal ribs, which have few passing holes,
improve the run convergence, the relaxation parameters were part of the flow which enters the Inb is re-circulated back to the OT
slightly reduced with respect to the default values. through the (few) holes of the poloidal rib, see Fig. 8.
At the inlet boundary, a mass flow rate of 41.45 kg/s has Following the fluid moving upward in the Inb segment, Fig. 10
been imposed. At the outlet section, a so-called “pressure outlet” presents the flow path across the equatorial plane in the Inb. The
boundary condition has been assumed, i.e., a reference pressure, contour plot of the vertical component of the velocity (positive
conventionally equal to 0, has been specified. when directed upwards) is reported. While the area-averaged flow
We considered constant water properties, evaluated at 100 ◦ C speed is obviously positive, there are large portions of the VV cross
and 0.9 MPa: the value of the density is 958.72 kg/m3 , the value of section (blue regions in Fig. 10), where the coolant recirculates
the viscosity is 2.8196 × 10−4 Pa s. and flows downwards. Again, these will not however cause par-
ticular problems from the thermal point of view, see [7]. The flow
6. Results and discussion

6.1. Flow field

In Fig. 7 we show a map of the fluid pathlines1 , drawn forward

from the inlet of the sector. The coolant redistributes across the
port. The flow detaches at some places, and develops a number
of macroscopic vortices, which correspond to low speed (almost
stagnating) regions, but these will not cause particular problems
from the thermal point of view, see [7]. The coolant coming from
the lower port moves then upward and downward, but stays in a
region of ∼10◦ of the (half) sector, without reaching the adjacent

Fig. 8. Velocity x-component distribution (m/s) in the holes at the outboard–inboard

1
Trajectories followed by massless particles starting from a given surface and bottom connection plate (positive values mean flow recirculating from Inb toward
moving forward or backward along the flow field. OB).
3276 L. Savoldi Richard et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279

Fig. 11. Velocity x-component distribution (m/s) in the holes at the

inboard–outboard top connection plate (positive values mean flow directed
from Inb toward OT).

Fig. 9. Fluid pathlines drawn forward from the Inb/OB connection plate, colored by
velocity magnitude.

Fig. 12. Pathlines entering the IMK #4, colored by fluid velocity magnitude.

Fig. 10. Velocity distribution (vertical component, in m/s) across the inboard equa-
torial plane. Positive values are upwards.
is mainly concentrated in the corner passages, especially close to
the symmetry axis of the sector (left side in Fig. 10), where it fol-
lows straight the path of the flow entering the Inb segment from
the lower port. Finally, at the Inb-OT connection plate, most of
the flow through the holes is directed as intended toward the OB,
see Fig. 11.
According to our simulation, of the total mass flow rate only
∼3.9 kg/s enter the Inb without returning back to the OB segment,
while an additional ∼3 kg/s enter the Inb but then flow back to
the OB segment. The resulting computed repartition of the coolant
mass flow rate is ∼9% in the Inb segment and ∼91% in the OB/OT.

Fig. 13. Fluid streamlines on a poloidal cut across the IMK #1 (left) and #4 (right). The streamlines are colored according to the velocity magnitude, while the background
color returns the vertical component of the speed Uz.
 L. Savoldi Richard et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279 3277

Fig. 14. Velocity magnitude (m/s) at the OB/TrS connection holes.

Fig. 17. Static coolant pressure distribution close to the outlet. (The draining pipe,
0.035 m inner diameter, which should occupy part of the outlet cross section, was
simplified away in our model, thanks to its negligible cross section.).

(left), i.e. with a flow direction reversed with respect to the expec-
tations. From the IMK #4 and upwards, the flow enters from the
flow driver as expected/desired, see Fig. 13 (right).
The flow of the coolant into and out from the TrS is reported in
Fig. 14. The coolant enters the TrS mainly from the two big bottom
Fig. 15. Fluid pathlines in the TrS, drawn forward from the hydraulic inlets and holes, especially from the one closer to the lower port (where the
backward from the hydraulic outlets, colored by the velocity magnitude. fluid enters the VV), and from the small holes closer to the port.
The fluid exiting from the TrS moves upwards, filling the central
poloidal channels of the OB.
This relative unbalance, however, has no negative effect on the final
The map of the fluid velocity magnitude over the connecting
temperature distribution, see [7].
holes between OB and TrS is shown in Fig. 14. The total mass flow
We conclude this Section with the discussion of the flow features
rate entering the TrS is 6.95 kg/s, i.e. ∼17% of the total mass flow
in two special structures of the VV RS, namely the IMK and the TrS.
rate entering the regular sector.
As it will be seen in [7], the IMK is an especially delicate com-
The fluid path inside the TrS itself is shown in Fig. 15. The
ponent because of the high nuclear heat flux it receives. The detail
poloidal flow distribution is very non uniform, and low speed areas
of the flow path in the IMK #4 is reported in Fig. 12, where the
are present on the sides of the two big inlet holes, where very few
pathlines have been drawn forward from the inlet surface of the
pathlines are present (corresponding also to fluid at low speed).
IMK flow driver. It is seen that part of the flow is recirculated out
from the sides of the inlet surface. The total mass flow rate passing
through the IMK # 4 is ∼0.001 kg/s (higher mass flow rates are com-
puted for other IMKs.) However, in the IMKs closer to the toroidal
ribs, see Fig. 5, the fluid path is still perturbed by the presence of
the ribs and the coolant flows in the opposite direction, entering
the IMK from the top and exiting from the flow driver, see Fig. 13

Fig. 16. Static coolant pressure distribution close to the inlet. Fig. 18. Static pressure contour on the surface of the VV sector.
3278 L. Savoldi Richard et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279
Fig. 19. Map of the orthogonal quality of the mesh (ortho parameter) on a cut of the
VV regular sector at z = 2 m: (a) Inb segment and (b) OT segment.
6.2. Pressure drop
Figs. 16 and 17 shows the static coolant pressure field close to the
inlet and outlet of the VV sector, respectively. The total computed
pressure drop between inlet and outlet is about 25 kPa. Almost the
whole drop occurs close to the inlet and outlet sections. This is
easy to understand if we consider that the entire mass flow passes
through the inlet/outlet pipes (diameter 0.128 m) and is subject to
sudden change of direction and enlargement/restriction of the flow
cross section, both resulting in localized pressure drops.
Fig. 20. (a) Residuals history. (b) Convergence history of the outlet velocity magni-
tude (m/s).
Fig. 21. (a) Fluid sub-domain considered for the mesh independence study. (b)
Result of the mesh independence study reported as sensitivity of the computed
pressure drop to the number of tetrahedra, for two different values of the imposed
mass flow rate (arrows correspond to the mesh parameters used in the rest of the
paper).
In Fig. 18 we show that the poloidal and toroidal ribs in the sector
[11] create localized pressure drops between adjacent regions. The
high hydraulic impedance of the toroidal rib at the bottom of the Inb
segment (connection grid between OB and Inb), as well as of the ribs
below the divertor rail in the Inb (see red arrows in Fig. 18), largely
contributes to the asymmetric flow repartition between inboard
and outboard leg discussed above.
7. Conclusions
The 3D steady-state flow and pressure field of the water coolant
in a regular sector of the ITER vacuum vessel has been computed
using the Computational Fluid Dynamics tool FLUENT.
The complexity of the flow geometry between inner and outer
shells required some simplifications to make the problem computa-
tionally manageable. Nevertheless, a mesh of about 50 million cells
was still needed to guarantee sufficient accuracy and convergence
of the simulation. Several specific and important features of the
vacuum vessel, like blanket support housings and inter-modular
keys, were included in the model for the first time.
Concerning the flow field, it turned out that only about 10% of
the total coolant mass flow rate goes through the inboard path.
Several recirculation zones are noted as a consequence of the
limited permeability of the toroidal ribs used to stiffen the struc-
ture. The limited permeability of the poloidal ribs, combined with
the toroidal asymmetry of the inlet, induces a nonuniformity of the
flow among the different poloidal channels, both in the inboard and
in the outboard paths.
Concerning the pressure distribution, most (∼90%) of the pres-
sure drop across the vacuum vessel sector is localized in the inlet
and outlet piping.
 L. Savoldi Richard et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 88 (2013) 3272–3279
The purely hydraulic analysis presented in this Part I will be the
basis for the thermal-hydraulic analysis, which is presented in Part
II [7].
Acknowledgements
The work at Politecnico di Torino was partially financially sup-
ported by F4E under contract F4E-2009-OPE-031-01-01. We thank
M. Nenni and V. Santoro for help with the post-processing of some
of the results.
The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily
reflect those of the ITER Organization.
Appendix. Numerics
This Appendix describes a number of important numerical fea-
tures of the mesh generation and solution process.
A.1. Mesh quality
The mesh generation was a quite complex problem, mostly
due to the large number of small details in a large domain. As
a consequence, the first grid created with ICEM was never fully
satisfactory and a large number of smoothing steps proved to be
necessary. This smoothing was done in two phases: the mesh
was first smoothed using the ICEM smoothing tools (with the
ICEM “quality” criterion, which is based on the cell aspect ratio
[12]). After importing the mesh in FLUENT, further smoothing
steps were performed (using the FLUENT “orthogonal quality”
criterion [16]), until no further mesh quality improvement was
possible.
The FLUENT recommendation that no cells are above 0.95 is rea-
sonably satisfied in our mesh where just ∼0.025% of the cells have
skew values above that threshold. The volume average value of skew
as reported by FLUENT is 0.37.
In general the mesh did reach a good orthogonal quality level,
with some lower quality regions concentrated close to the poloidal
ribs, see Fig. 19, where a single layer of tetrahedra was squeezed
between the two boundary layers discretized with prisms. The FLU-
ENT recommendation that no cells are below 0.01 is reasonably
satisfied in our mesh where just ∼0.001% of the cells have ortho
values below that threshold.
A.2. Convergence to steady state
The residuals history and the convergence of the area weighted
velocity across the outlet section as the iterations progress are
shown in Fig. 20. After an initial irregular phase, all the residuals
decay slowly but steadily up to a final saturation level. Also the out-
let mass flow rate stabilizes following some oscillations, matching
3279
the inlet value imposed as boundary condition. At this point, after
about 2500 iterations, the run was stopped.
A.3. Mesh independence study
For this study only a sub-domain of the VV fluid domain has
been considered, as shown in Fig. 21a, but fully representative of
the flow between the shells and IWS and also including the complex
flow pattern inside an IMK.
Two different sensitivities have been tested, namely that to the
increase of the number of tetrahedra and, separately, to the increase
of number of prism layers. We impose two different values of the
mass flow rate and compute the corresponding pressure drop.
The results of the sensitivity study to the number of tetrahedra
are shown in Fig. 21b. It is seen that the results computed on the
coarsest grid, which is comparable to that used for the analysis of
the entire VV in this paper, are comparable to those obtained on the
finest grid, with a maximum overestimation of the pressure drop
∼15% at the lowest mass flow rate.
Essentially no influence on the computed mass flow rate has
been noted while increasing the number of prisms from 5 to 15 in
the thickness.
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