JORDI, a test facility for measurement of contact resistance distribution in full-size conductor terminations

A new test facility, dedicated to the measurement of contact resistance distribution in full-size conductor termination, has been designed and manufactured at CRPP Fusion Technology in Villigen, Switzerland. The facility will be used to characterize and qualify the ITER joints (both prototype and industrial). The basic components of the new facility are: a medium size, liquid helium cryostat to host the termination sample, a cryogenic, parallel resistor array for providing balanced current injection in up to 100 channels, a 10 kA DC power supply (100 channels of each 100 A), a pair of conventional current leads rated at 10 kA and a data acquisition system with 200 analogue input channels (100 voltage and 100 current readouts). As opposed to the earlier attempts where the contact resistance was measured under an unbalanced current distribution (only one strand was connected to the current source) in the new facility the contact resistance is measured under imposed balanced current distribution among all current carrying elements and the voltage drops are sensed simultaneously.