Mechanical characteristics and position control of vehicle/manipulator forITER blanket remote maintenance

In International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), blanket mainten ance requires the 4-tonne module handling with high positioning accuracy of +/- 2 mm. In order to meet this requirement, it is essential to suppress t he dynamic deflection and vibration of the remote handling equipment due to sudden transfer of the module weight from/to the back-plate supports to/fr om the equipment itself during installation and removal. A new control sche me was proposed and tested so as to suppress the dynamic behaviors. As a re sult, the dynamic deflection of the rail and the acceleration of the manipu lator were sucesessfully decreased to nearly zero. Based on the test result s, the proposed control scheme was concluded to be effective so as to suppr ess this kind of dynamic effect during heavy component handling. (C) 2000 E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.