Thermal Assessment of the DTT Bolometric Camera

The Divertor Tokamak Test facility (DTT) is a fusion device under construction at the ENEA Research Centre in Frascati, Italy. DTT’s primary mission is to explore and test the physics and technology of concepts for the exhaust of the plasma thermal power, especially in the divertor region, in support to ITER and DEMO design. From this perspective, careful control of the total radiation emission will be essential for the operation of these next generation devices. This work focuses on the DTT bolometry system, which is currently in the design phase. Commercial foil bolometers have been selected to provide line-integrated measurements and enable tomographic reconstructions at this stage. The mechanical layout and integration into the machine have been defined, and the line-of-sights (LoS) configuration has been validated. However, preliminary thermo-mechanical analyses have revealed that the initial design did not fully meet all specifications. To address this, an actively cooled protective housing has been included to withstand the high thermal loads from the plasma, approximately 0.5 MW/m² for about 100 s in DTT. In this study, the equatorial bolometric camera simulations have been further refined, and the protective housing has been designed and fully integrated in the diagnostic port. A parametric thermal analysis has been performed, and the final design has been validated through finite elements simulations.