Thermal fatigue test of a Cu/SS primary wall mock-up

A primary wall mock-up was recently tested in the Thermal Fatigue Test Facility of the Joint Research Centre of the European Union, Ispra site. It was manufactured by High Speed. Tech. LTD Oy in collaboration with VTT Manufacturing Technology, Finland. It consisted of a Cu-Cr-Zr plate in which 6 cooling channels were obtained along the block length. Two steel plates, having a total depth of 5 mm, were explosion welded one after the other onto the surface opposite to the heated one. After that, type 316L steel cooling tubes were tightened into the channels by means of explosive inside tubes. The component was thermal fatigue tested for 13,000 cycles at a maximum heat flux of 570 MW/m². The mock-up completed the fatigue test without any problems and without the appearance of any macroscopic defect