CFC/Cu bond damage in actively cooled plasma facing components

Abstract

Carbon fibre composite (CFC) armours have been successfully used for actively cooled plasma facing components (PFCs) of the Tore Supra (TS) tokamak. They were also selected for the divertor of the stellarator W7-X under construction and for the vertical target of the ITER divertor. In TS and W7-X a flat tile design for heat fluxes of 10 MW m−2 has been chosen. To predict the lifetime of such PFCs, it is necessary to analyse the damage mechanisms and to model the damage propagation when the component is exposed to thermal cycling loads. Work has been performed to identify a constitutive law for the CFC and parameters to model crack propagation from the edge singularity. The aim is to predict damage rates and to propose geometric or material improvements to increase the strength and the lifetime of the interfacial bond. For ITER a tube-in-tile concept (monoblock), designed to sustain heat fluxes up to 20 MW m−2, has been developed. The optimization of the CFC/Cu bond, proposed for flat tiles, could be adopted for the monoblock concept.