Recent progress on W-related PWI studies on EAST

Plasma wall interaction (PWI) in tokamaks will have a serious impact on the lifetime of plasma facing components, the performance of fusion plasmas and the tritium retention in devices. Tungsten (W) is the most promising candidate material for the divertor region of next step fusion reactors, such as ITER. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which can operate with long pulse, high performance plasma and W divertor, provides a good platform for the W related PWI studies under steady state plasma. In this paper, recent progress on W-related PWI studies on EAST are summarized. According to the edge spectroscopic observations, W erosion rates and impurities content in the plasma are characterized and analyzed. Correspondingly, W erosion and re-deposition at the divertor region was simulated by the Monte Carlo code ERO. Furthermore, control of W erosion via different means was studied. (author)