Concept design of the DEMO divertor cassette-to-vacuum vessel locking system adopting a systems engineering approach

This paper deals with pre-concept studies of DEMO divertor cassette-to-vacuum vessel locking systemunder the work program WP13-DAS-07-T06: Divertor Remote Maintenance System pre-concept study.An iterative design process, consistent with Systems Engineering guidelines and named Iterative andParticipative Axiomatic Design Process (IPADeP), is used in this paper to propose new innovative solutionsfor divertor locking system, which can overcome the difficulties in applying the ITER principles to DEMO.The solutions conceived have been analysed from the structural point of view using the software Ansysand, eventually, evaluated using the methodology known as Fuzzy-Analytic Hierarchy Process. Due tothe lack and the uncertainty of the requirements in this early conceptual design stage, the aim is to covera first iteration of an iterative and incremental process to propose an innovative design concept to bedeveloped in more details as the information will be completed.