Materials for Fusion

The increasing interest in tungsten and tungsten alloys for the application as plasma facing materials in future fusion facilities like ITER and DEMO requires thorough investigation of the materials performance under fusion relevant conditions. Among others this includes the damage analysis in correlation with the response to high transient thermal loads and the determination of the thermal shock resistance. In order to launch numerical simulations that will help to verify and understand test results and to predict the behavior of the material a reliable database on a reference tungsten grade has to be established. In the course of this work a newly developed pure reference tungsten grade was investigated in its stress relieved and recrystallized state under ELM relevant conditions. This comprises multiple (x100) thermal shock loading in the electron beam facility JUDITH I at different power densities and base temperatures as well as subsequent analysis of the material damage related to the materials microstructure.