Analysis, verification, and benchmarking of the transient thermal hydraulic ITERTHA code for the design of ITER divertor

An analytical study for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Thermal Hydraulic Analysis code (ITERTHA) is carried out for a copper divertor with a 5 mm tungsten tile. The influence of the incident heat flux, swirl-tape insertion in cooling channels as well as the coolant flow velocity on the divertor thermal response is analyzed and discussed. The ITERTHA code results are verified by the commercial finite element code, COSMOS. The heat transfer coefficients at the nodes located on the cooling channel-wall are determined outside COSMOS code by the same methodology used in ITERTHA. A good agreement is achieved under different incident heat fluxes. The ITERTHA code is also benchmarked against the thermal-hydraulic calculation of the outer divertor of the Fusion Ignition Research Experiment, FIRE for an incident heat flux of 20 MW/m2 and coolant flow velocity of 10 m/s in a cooling channel of 8 mm diameter with swirl-tape inserts of 2 ratio and 1.5 mm thickness. The results show excellent agreement for both steady and transient states and prove the successful implementation of both the hydraulic and heated diameters of the swirl-tape channels in the used heat transfer correlations.