Joining technologies of reduced activation ferritic/martensitic steel for blanket fabrication

Reduced activation ferritic/martensitic steel, like F82H has been developed as a structural material for in vessel components because of its superior resistance to irradiation damage. As a blanket fabrication process, hot isostatic pressing (HIP) bonding has the great merit of near-net-shaping processing. The degassing conditions and surface roughness were investigated as parameters of HIP conditions. Although the surface roughness and degassing conditions had slight effects on tensile properties, the lack of degassing caused significant degradation of impact properties. A dissimilar metal joint between sintered tungsten and F82H was fabricated by a spark plasma sintering (SPS) method. The joint had no defects in spite of the large difference in thermal expansion coefficient between tungsten and F82H. It is considered that formation of a compliant layer of the ferritic phase can lead to successful bonding for the tungsten and F82H joint even without an artificial interlayer.