A Rapid Nondestructive Inspection Method Applied to EAST Lower Divertor by Infrared Thermography

Lower divertor, as the most critical part of experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST), has functions of protecting the vacuum vessel, particles exhausting, and heat load handling. Doped graphite with SiC coating is adopted as plasma-facing material, which is bolted to active water-cooling heat sink by an M8 screw with a soft graphite sheet inserted between graphite tile and heat sink to improve the capacity of heat transmission currently. In order to guarantee excellent performance of lower divertor, every striking target, which contains 27th graphite tiles, must be inspected for its assembly quality before being installed in EAST device. This paper introduces a rapid nondestructive inspection method for EAST lower divertor by infrared (IR) thermography. The poor assembly quality, such as unevenness of contact surface of graphite tile or heat sink, overlap of the soft graphite sheet, and unqualified values of torque, can be detected qualitatively by comparison of the surface temperature evolution of graphite tiles in symmetric positions of the same divertor target when water flowing in the tube welded into heat sink is changed from hot to cold. The 3-D thermal finite-element analyses are performed to simulate the case of target with excellent assembly quality and defect-free tiles and as a reference for the experimental observations obtained by IR thermography eventually.