Recrystallization of bulk and plasma-coated tungsten with accumulated thermal energy relevant to Type-I ELM in ITER H-mode operation

Abstract The recrystallization of bulk tungsten is investigated under various thermal loads that are relevant to the accumulation energy during Type-I ELM in ITER H-mode operation. A thermal plasma torch is used to examine only the thermal load effect on the material; therefore, the charge and atomic effects are ignored. In this condition, recrystallization is observed in bulk W with a surface temperature above 1700 °C. The effect becomes severe with a finite recrystallization thickness near the surface, which introduces vertical cracking along grain boundaries with increasing thermal load. However, plasma-sprayed tungsten (PS-W) is not crystallized because neighboring lamellas merge, destroying their interlayer and producing no vertical cracks. This is attributed to an annealing effect in PS-W. Therefore, these results suggest that a multilayer W structure is advantageous in the fabrication of W, especially for long pulse operation in a future fusion reactor.