RESULTS OF THE IAEA BENCHMARK ON LIFETIME PREDICTIONS OF FIRST WALL COMPONENTS

The objective of a co-ordinated research programme on 'lifetime predic tions for the first wall of fusion machines' was to intercompare metho ds used in the several participating laboratories for predicting lifet ime analyses of the first wall components and to compare these analyti cal predictions with the results of fatigue experiments performed at J RC-Ispra, The first part of the IAEA benchmark considered initially de fect-free components, This exercise showed that the thermal fatigue li fe of prototype FW components can be adequately predicted by several d esign codes. The second part of the IAEA benchmark dealt with a crack propagation experiment. The main conclusions found there are, that dif ferent methods for the evaluation of the range in stress intensity fac tor lead to very good agreement, and that elastic-plastic fracture mec hanics is necessary to predict the crack extension.