Speaker
Paulo Carvalho
(Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear)
Description
Experimental fusion reactors aim at the exploration of the nuclear fusion as a viable energy resource. Remote Handling Systems (RHS) are specially designed for regular operations of inspection and maintenance inside the reactors, such as the In-Vessel Transporter, an extendable robotic arm deployed in the equatorial level of ITER. The reactor is shutdown during the installation and operation of the RHS, which is time-consuming and expensive. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are able to perform simple inspection missions inside the reactor before the RHS operations. The information acquired by the UAV through the reactor provides the ability to previously setup the inspection and maintenance operations, yielding time and cost benefits.
This work presents an assessment of common UAV (e.g. quadcopters), to perform simple inspection missions inside the reactor during its shutdown. Such UAV are able to transport different on-board sensors to get an insight view of the blankets and other elements inside the reactor, while providing the maneuverability and endurance to perform the inspection missions. The costs of producing, maintaining and operating UAV are reduced when compared to the time and costs that can be reduced with the valuable information acquired during the flight.
To achieve the maximum flexibility for different type of missions and also for the replace ability following radiation exposure, the UAV is composed of modules, such as frame, propellers, motors, sensors, main control unit and batteries.This work also proposes a multi-criteria optimization approach to find the best UAV design and configuration to operate inside the reactors, taking into account the time duration of the mission, the required maneuverability, the endurance to rad-hard conditions and replace ability of the modules, the total weight, and the total cost of the UAV.
A set of optimized solutions are presented and compared to the performance of different commercial off-the-shelf solutions.
Co-authors
Alberto Vale
(Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal)
Paulo Carvalho
(Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal)
Rodrigo Ventura
(Instituto de Sistemas e Robotica, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal)
