Deep drawing of tungsten plates for structural divertor applications in future fusion devices

Abstract The reference design of a helium cooled divertor for future fusion reactors makes use of hundreds of thousands of finger units consisting of a pressurized structural part called a thimble. Due to the high number of parts needed, the thimble has to be fabricated by mass production techniques like deep drawing. As the thimble is a pressurized part exposed to an internal pressure of 100 bar, the demands for the material are high, which means that it requires the best available tungsten material. Former work has shown that pure tungsten material has the best impact properties and has to be preferred over other commercially available tungsten materials, such as that doped with potassium or strengthened with oxides like lanthanum oxide. Furthermore the inherent weakness of the grain boundaries has to be taken into account, which requires the need for grains that are aligned to the contour of the part (grain boundary alignment). This paper describes the successful deep drawing of a 1 mm tungsten plate in high vacuum at 600 °C. In doing this, a thimble can be machined with grains that follow the contour. Furthermore the characterization of a 1 mm tungsten plate is conducted by tensile tests at room temperature and at 600 °C, as well as by Charpy tests taking into account the anisotropic material behaviour.