Dusts resuspension Test in the STARDUST Facility: Experimental and CFD Analysis

This thesis is related to the application of the CFD FLUENT code to the dust resuspension tests performed inside the STARDUST (Small Tank for Aerosol Removal and Dust) facility, built at the ENEA FUS laboratories in Frascati (Rome), with the goal to experimentally analyze the resuspension behavior of different types of dusts present inside the Vacuum Vessel of a fusion reactor. Since 2003 STARDUST was employed to obtain an experimental knowledge about particles resuspension phenomena due to an air flow. For a fusion experimental device like ITER the dust mobilization is one of the main safety concerns: the plasma disruptions and the bumps of the plasma against the first wall or the divertor structures cause significant erosions of mobilizable materials. The conservative assumption to mobilize all these dusts is adopted in the accident analyses in support of the ITER licensing. To support a less conservative hypothesis several campaigns of experimental tests have been performed inside the STARDUST facility. The code has been employed in the simulations of resuspension tests with an obstacle present inside the facility, to further validate their use in the simulation of the dust transport phenomena