Experimental and numerical simulations of ELM-like transient damage behaviors to different grade tungsten and tungsten alloys

Transient heat loads, such as plasma disruptions and ELMs, could induce plastic deformations, cracking, melting, even fatigue cracks and creep of tungsten (W) surface. A high purity W, CVD-W coating, TiC dispersion strengthened and K doped tungsten alloys were tested in a 60 kW electron-beam facility by simulating the transient load events under different base temperatures. It was found that CVD-W, W-TiC and W-K alloys have higher crack thresholds than high purity W, meanwhile CVD-W is more sensitive to the crack disappearing at elevated base temperatures. On the other hand, repetitive pulse loading like ELMs can induce serious network cracks even the power density was quite lower than the crack threshold determined by a single shot. The ABAQUS code was used to simulate the crack behaviors of ITER grade pure W by a single shot and a FE-SAFE code was adopted to estimate the fatigue life under ELMs-like loads. A good agreement with experiment results was found.