ASIPP Develops Two Flux Cores for US FLARE Project

The FLUX COREs of the Facility for the Laboratory Reconnection Experiments (FLARE), developed by ASIPP under the Sino-US cooperation, passed quality acceptance and was officially delivered in early May. 

The two FLUX COREs of FLARE will be used for forming and balance of the laboratory reconnection plasma position type. It is the key system to assure the FLARE Plasma excitation and high accuracy of reconnection position type. The inner core coupling system structure is very complex and requires high accuracy. The peak current of the inner TF and PF core respectively are 250KA and 540kA. The 2.4 meter high feeder system requires the Perpendicularity to be less than 1mm, and space 3D spiral G10 main part requires the surface outline dimension precision to be less than 0.5mm.  

The overall design of this project was undertaken by ASIPP Tokamak Design Division, and the manufacture was undertaken by ASIPP R&D Center – Hefei Juneng Electrophysics Technology Development Co. Ltd. During the process of design and development, ASIPP engineers overcame all the challenges of the two magnet systems including the short duration for designing, processing and testing as well as the large workload in order to fulfill the requirements of efficiency and high accuracy. Through continuous optimization and hundreds of times of video conferencing, the techniques and implement of all the components were determined rigorously, ensuring high quality and specification.  

The US experts highly praised ASIPP for the high quality of the two FLUX COREs and the efficiency of its development. According to the acceptance group, the completion of the two FLUX COREs is a key step in the construction of the whole FLARE facility, and this success can be a good opportunity to promote the cooperation between ASIPP and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) as well as Princeton University (PU). 

FLARE is an intermediate laboratory facility currently under construction at Princeton University by a consortium of five universities (Princeton University, University of California - Berkeley, University of California - Los Angeles, University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin - Madison) and two national laboratories affiliated to Department of Energy (Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory). This facility, upon completion, will be located at the PPPL. The goal of FLARE is to provide experimental accesses to new regimes of the magnetic reconnection process and related phenomena directly relevant to heliophysics, astrophysics, and fusion plasmas. (ZHENG Jingxing reports)

Flux COREs of FLARE Project

Project Acceptance