Thermal fatigue equipment to test joints of materials for high heat flux components

The activity, carried out in the framework of an ITER divertor task, was aimed at defining a suitable method in order to qualify junctions between armour materials and heat sink of plasma-facing components (PFCs) mock-ups. An equipment able to perform thermal fatigue testing by electrical heating and active water-cooling was constructed and a standard for the sample was defined. In this equipment, during operation cycles, two samples are heated by thermal contact up to a relevant temperature value (350°C) and then the water flow is switched on, thus producing fast cooling with time constants and gradients close to the real operating conditions. The equipment works with a test cycle of about 60 s and is suitable for continuous operation. A complete test consists of about 10 000 cycles. After the assembling, the equipment and the control software were optimized to obtain a good reliability. Preliminary tests on mock-ups with flat CFC tiles joined to copper heat sink were performed. Finite-elements calculations were carried out in order to estimate the value of the thermal stresses arising close to the joint under the transient conditions that are characteristic of this equipment.