The effects of H blistering and ELMs on the thermal fatigue cracking of W by strikepoint sweeping

TL;DR

This study investigates how hydrogen blistering and ELM-like pre-cracking influence thermal fatigue cracking in tungsten divertor materials under strikepoint sweeping, revealing delayed crack initiation and localized melting effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combined experimental and modeling approach to study environmentally assisted fatigue in tungsten under fusion-relevant conditions.

Findings

Hydrogen implantation delays crack initiation by 3-4 times.

ELM-like pre-cracking causes localized melting and droplet formation.

Fatigue cracks can lead to thermal isolation and surface melting.

Abstract

Cyclic thermal loads imposed on a W divertor by strikepoint sweeping may induce low-cycle thermal fatigue cracking of its plasma-facing surfaces. This cracking may be accelerated by plasma-material interactions such as H implantation, blistering, fuzz and void formation. Fatigue cracking may also synergise with ELM cracking. To explore these novel forms of environmentally assisted fatigue, FEA modelling was used to design a uniaxial fatigue experiment for Magnum-PSI that represents strikepoint sweeping at 1 Hz across a 100 mm span of a divertor target. Magnum-PSI was used to combine cyclic thermal loading of W with H implantation and two forms of ELM like pre-cracking. Quantitative SEM analysis of fatigue-cracked W revealed that H implantation significantly delayed crack initiation, with preimplanted targets requiring 450-600 cycles before failure compared to 150 cycles for non-implanted samples. This was attributed to hydrogen-induced dislocation pinning, which produces a case-hardening effect that inhibits persistent slip band formation. ELM-like pre-cracking combined with strikepoint sweeping was found to give rise to localised melting and the formation of 30 micromete diameter droplets, caused by thermal isolation of W regions by fatigue cracks. The implications for the fatigue lifetime of tokamak divertors are also discussed.