Investigations of pulsed heat loads on a forced flow supercritical helium loop: Part B: Simulation of the cryogenic circuit

The VINCENTA software is applied to model the transient thermal-hydraulic flow of the HELIOS supercritical helium circuit. This cryogenic circuit is equipped with dedicated heating to simulate pulsed heat loads - See Part A for the description of the experimental set up. Currently, one of the main important problems to be solved is the control and smoothing of heat pulses in the cryogenic circuit to keep the refrigerator in stable operation. In this context, the aim of the present development is to get a predictive model for the experimental management of overall heat loads absorbed by the refrigerator as well as to better understand the associated physical phenomena. This preliminary model is validated with early experiments performed with the HELIOS test facility which is dedicated to simulate representative pulsed loads related to the Japanese tokamak JT60-SA. This article presents the first comparison between model and experiments for two JT60-SA relevant scaled down pulses: (20 s/600 s-1000 W) and (60 s/1800 s-750 W). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.