Reduction of preferential erosion of carbon fibre composites under intense transient heat pulses

Experimental study of PFCs erosion under ITER-like transient loads at plasma gun facility QSPA

“…Therefore other devices such as ion source [2], electron-beam facility [3,4], powerful plasma guns [4][5][6][7] are applied for armour testing.…”

Ti-doped isotropic graphite: A promising armour material for plasma-facing components

“…High heat flux tests were performed on all materials from table 1 in the electron beam test facility JUDITH at Forschungszentrum Jülich [5]. A fast beam scanning with frequencies of f x = 47 kHz and f y = 43 kHz was applied to guarantee a homogeneously loaded area.…”

“…In addition, recent results show that the retention of implanted hydrogen isotopes in CFC increases continuously with ion fluence, while in finegrain graphite quasi-saturation of the retention occurs, so that at the fluences reached in today's fusion devices within a typical experimental campaign the retention in CFC can exceed the retention in finegrain graphite by one order of magnitude [4]. Furthermore, under intense transient heat loads CFCs show a preferential erosion of the fibres aligned in the loaded-surface plane [5], while in fine-grain graphite the erosion by brittle destruction leads to a rather homogeneous erosion pattern [6].…”

Microstructural and thermo-mechanical characterization of carbon/carbon composites

“…In addition three fusion-relevant CFCs were considered: NB31, its upgraded version NB41 (SNECMA) and DMS780 (DUNLOP) [13]. NB31 and NB41 are both orthotropic (3-directionnal) unbalanced (pitch-PAN (PolyAcryloNitrile)) needled (with PAN fibers) laminates CFCs [5,8,13]. DMS780 is a cross-ply laminates of PAN fibers with a stacking sequence: felt layer (short fibers), fibers at 0°, felt layer, fibers at 90°.…”

“…These composites, socalled carbon fiber composites (CFCs) have been developed to improve the thermo-mechanical properties of isotropic fine grain graphite. Nevertheless, under thermal shock loads, e.g., ITER-like disruptions, all CBMs exhibit brittle destruction [3][4][5]. This phenomenon is due to the intrinsic thermo-mechanical anisotropy of graphitic structures [6,7], the presence of constituents with various structure organization degrees in CBMs (binder and grains) [3] and differently aligned sub-units in CFCs [5,[8][9][10].…”