The first wall (FW) of ITER blanket includes beryllium (Be) armor tiles joined to CuCrZr heat sink with stainless steel cooling tube and backing plate in order to improve plasma performance and reduce thermal stress. Therefore dissimilar materials joints are indispensable for fabricating the high heat flux components. Since these joints must withstand thermal and mechanical loads caused by the plasma and electromagnetic force, it is important to evaluate the strength and thermal fatigue life of dissimilar materials joints. When the dissimilar materials joints are subjected by external force and thermal loading, the stress of the joint may indicate singularity at the interface edge. Since the stress singularity may lower the strength of joints, the singularity is evaluated numerically for the various materials combinations and joint configuration to be used in high heat flux components of fusion reactors in this investigation. Moreover, tensile test and elasto-plastic FEM analysis are performed to investigate the fracture behavior of Be/Cu alloy and stainless steel/ Cu alloy obtained the FW mock-up. The results reveal two singular solutions of type rpj−1 for a half-plane bonded to a quarter-plane joint and the singularity is larger than that of a bonded quarter-planes joint. From the viewpoint of stress singularity, the configuration of bonded quarter-planes joint is better than the half-plane bonded to a quarter-plane joint. The singularity for W/Cu alloy combination is large compared to other combination of materials. Especially the singularity of stainless steel/ Cu alloy is very small. Tensile specimen of Be/CuCrZr joint fractured at the bonding interface due to the stress singularity. For the stainless steel/ Cu alloy, however, the specimens fractured at the Cu alloy region apart from the interface.
High heat flux testing of first wall mock-ups with and without neutron irradiation
