High velocity solid dust impacts on tiles of tokamak-relevant temperature

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2405.04339
• Publication Date: 2024-05-07
• Authors: M. De Angeli; P. Tolias; F. Suzuki-Vidal; D. Ripamonti; T. J. Ringrose; Hugo Doyle; Giambattista Dami...; Jay Shadbolt; Peter Jarvis; Monica De Angeli
• Keywords: Runaway electron impact; Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph); Wall cratering; Damage laws; TK9001-9401; Nuclear engineering. Atomic power; FOS: Physical sciences; Mechanical impacts; Physics - Applied Physics; Applied Physics (physics.app-ph); Dust in tokamaks; Physics - Plasma Physics; Runaway electron impact, Dust in tokamaks, Mechanical impacts, Wall cratering, Damage laws

Runaway electron incidence on plasma facing components triggers explosive events that are accompanied by the expulsion of fast solid debris. Subsequent dust-wall high speed impacts constitute a mechanism wall damage and dust destruction. Empirical laws can be employed for erosion estimates based room-temperature impact experiments. We use light-gas gun shooting systems to accelerate tungsten near-supersonic speeds towards bulk targets maintained at different temperatures. This concerns cooled down $-100^{\circ}$C with liquid nitrogen resistively heated up $400^{\circ}$C. Post-mortem surface analysis reveals three regimes (plastic deformation, bonding, partial disintegration) weakly depend target temperature within investigated range. It is concluded empirical measurements safely predictions.