A brief summary of the progress on the EFDA tungsten materials program

The long-term objective of the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA) fusion materials programme is to develop structural and armor materials in combination with the necessary production and fabrication technologies for reactor concepts beyond the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The programmatic roadmap is structured into four engineering research lines which comprise fabrication process development, structural material development, armor material optimization, and irradiation performance testing, which are complemented by a fundamental research programme on Materials Science and Modeling. This paper presents the current research status of the EFDA experimental and testing investigations, and gives a detailed overview of the latest results on materials research, fabrication, joining, high heat flux testing, plasticity studies, modeling, and validation experiments. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.