Citation
Müller, Alexander von and Ewert, Dagmar and Galatanu, Magdalena and Milwich, Markus and Neu, Rudolf and Pastor Caño, Jose Ignacio and Siefken, Udo and Tejado Garrido, Elena María and You, J.H.
(2016).
Melt infiltrated Tungsten-Copper composites as advanced heat sink materials for plasma facing components of future nuclear fusion devices.
In: "29th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2016)", 05/09/2016-09/09/2016, Praga, República Checa. pp. 1-5.
Abstract
The exhaust of power and particles is regarded as a major challenge in view of the design of a magnetic confinement
nuclear fusion demonstration power plant (DEMO). In such a reactor, highly loaded plasma facing components
(PFCs), like the divertor vertical targets, have to withstand both severe high heat
ux loads and considerable neutron
irradiation. Existing divertor target designs make use of monolithic tungsten (W) and copper (Cu) material grades
that are combined in a PFC. Such an approach, however, bears engineering difficulties as W and Cu are materials
with inherently different thermomechanical properties and their optimum operating temperature windows do not overlap.
Against this background, W-Cu composite materials are promising candidates regarding the application to the
heat sink of highly loaded PFCs. The present contribution summarises recent results regarding the manufacturing
and characterisation progress of such W-Cu composite materials produced by means of liquid Cu melt infiltration of
open porous W preforms. On the one hand, this includes composites manufactured by infiltrating powder metallurgically
produced W skeletons. On the other hand, W-Cu composites based on textile technologically produced fibrous
reinforcement preforms are discussed.