from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
<div>During the operation of fusion devices, plasma facing components (PFCs) are subjected to high thermal loads. These result in mechanical stresses and various forms of degradation and microstructural changes in the material volume. In order to assess the viability of the PFC candidate materials, tungsten samples were subjected to high heat flux tests simulating heat load pulses caused by plasma instabilities. The presented study includes also a thermal model developed in ANSYS Fluent software to simulate the temperature profile at different depths of the sample and its evolution during the tests. Thermal loading was performed using an electron beam facility. Short pulses (~1 s) of up to 40 MW/m2 thermal load were applied to the top surface of 10 mm wide cylindrical samples. Homogeneous heat flux distribution over the circular area was achieved by scanning the electron beam in a dense pattern. The temperature evolution during the tests was monitored using a thermocouple inserted into the sample along with the surface temperature measurement with a pyrometer. Scanning electron microscopy was used to document surface degradation. A dense net of intergranular cracks typically formed on the loaded surface of the studied material. As a result of a qualitative comparison of the measured temperature profiles during the experiments with the profiles issued from ANSYS simulations, the computational thermal model was verified.</div>
Keywords: Tungsten, plasma facing materials, high heat flux testing, electron beam, surface degradation© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.