ISTTOK tokamak plasmas influence on a liquid gallium jet dynamic behavior

Abstract The main concern in using free flowing liquid metals in fusion devices is related to their interaction with magnetic fields. On ISTTOK tokamak, liquid gallium jets are injected deep into the plasma along a vertical direction. The influence of the plasma interaction on the jet has been investigated monitoring the liquid metal behavior using a fast frame camera. A radial shift on its trajectory has been detected and found to depend on the toroidal magnetic field magnitude and principally on the plasma position within the chamber. The analysis performed to understand the dynamics of the jet perturbation by the plasma is presented in this paper. The jet surface temperature increase during this interaction has also been measured, using absolutely calibrated multichannel IR sensors, to evaluate the jet power exhaustion capability.