A thermomechanical criterion for hot cracking during electron beam welding of CuCrZr alloy

Full text of publication follows: Due to its good thermomechanical and thermophysical properties, precipitation hardened CuCrZr alloy is used for structural components in fusion experiments such as Tore Supra, JET, W7X and will find also application in the thermonuclear fusion reactor ITER. In Tore Supra (CEA Cadarache, France) this material is typically used for heat sink structures of plasma facing components. The experience feedback showed that the CuCrZr alloy was very sensitive to the hot tearing phenomenon during electron beam welding, leading to defects in and/or near the melted zone. The objective of the project under consideration is to propose a hot tearing criterion by mean of numerical simulations, in order to define a welding acceptance test which could be applied to the material, delivered from different manufacturers. In order to characterize the hot tearing phenomenon, a laboratory test, inspired by the Shibahara's experiment, is used. An electron beam welding seam is performed on a thin rectangular plate, which is instrumented with thermocouples while a CCD camera allows recording of eventual cracking defects during welding. The image correlation method permits to determine the displacement field in the solidified welding seam as well as in the non melted zone. In order to identify the hot tearing criterion due to the welding process, the stress and strain state in the material during the laboratory test is calculated with a Lagrangian thermomechanical finite element simulation. For high temperatures, the alloy viscosity is taken into account in order to identify an elasto-viscoplastic behaviour law. Thermomechanical experiments are performed with a Gleeble physical simulator. A thermomechanical criterion for the initiation of hot tearing during electron beam welding of a quenched and aged CuCr1Zr alloy (DIN 17672 standard) has been identified. (authors)