Effect of the ITER FW Manufacturing Process on the Microstructure and Properties of a CuCrZr Alloy

The first wall (FW) is one of the core components in ITER. As the heat sink material, the CuCrZr alloy shall be properly jointed with beryllium and stainless steel. At present, the grains of CuCrZr are prone to coarsen seriously in the thermal cycle process of FW manufacturing, which has become a critical issue for ITER parties. To investigate the mirostructure and mechanical properties of the optimized CuCrZr alloy in the first wall fabricating thermal cycle, simulative experiments have been done in this study. The alloy ingot was forged and hot rolled into plates, and then solid solution annealed, cold rolled and aged for strengthening. Several heat treatments were done to the CuCrZr samples, and the changes of microstructure, micro-hardness and tensile strength were investigated. The results indicated that the original elongated grains had changed into equiaxed ones, and the vickers hardness had declined to about 60 after experiencing the process of CuCrZr/316L(N) bi-metallic plate manufacturing, either by hot isostatic pressing at a higher temperature or by explosion welding followed by solution annealing. Joining Be/CuCrZr by hot isostatic pressing acts as an aging process for CuCrZr, so after the simulated heat treatment, the hardness of the alloy increased to about 110 HV and the tensile yield strength at 250°C rose to about 170 MPa. Meanwhile, the average grain size was controlled below 200 μm.