Response to high heat fluxes and metallurgical examination of a brazed carbon-fiber-composite/refractory-metal divertor mock-up

Abstract

As a feasibility-study an actively cooled divertor mock-up has been subjected to high heat flux loading in electron beam simulation. The divertor design concept is based on a carbon-fiber-composite material (Aerolor 05) brazed onto a TZM/Mo41Re heat sink. The plasma facing carbon armor is divided in seven tiles to allow variable loading parameters - and repeated destructive tests. The mock-up has survived high heat flux loading up to about 12 MW/m 2 surface heat flux in steady-state conditions. One armor tile showed no change in the thermal response even after 500 s at ∼ 14 MW/m 2. To estimate the general thermal response of the mock-up design, numerical methods were applied. The predicted behavior was confirmed by the experimental results. The loading experiments were followed by a detailed metallurgical investigation of the loaded sample regions and the braze joints. The typical damages after high heat flux testing and cycling were failure (i.e. detachment) in the Zr brazed carbon/TZM joint, and failure in the CuPd bonded TZM/TZM joint due to an excess of the melting temperature of the brazes. The microstructural changes in the braze regions and the recrystallization behavior of the refractory alloys are discussed. Only in one case the loaded surface of the carbon armor shows considerable erosion, caused by a partial detachment along a braze joint and thus loss of the good thermal contact during the last applied loading shots. The thermal analyses and high heat flux performance of the Aerolor-05 armored mock-up are compared to the thermal response of a previously tested mock-up of corresponding geometry with armor tiles of isotropic graphite.