Studies of tungsten erosion at the inner and outer main chamber wall of the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak

A critical issue for the choice of main chamber first wall materials in future fusion devices such as ITER is the erosion rate due to bombardment by charge-exchange (CX) neutrals. Due to the relatively small flux density of impacting particles, respective measurements are only possible using long term samples (LTS) exposed for a full experimental campaign. In ASDEX Upgrade, CX erosion has been studied extensively for tungsten on the inner heat shield by placing four W coated tiles at different poloidal positions in one toroidal sector. During the same campaign, several LTS were placed at different poloidal and toroidal positions of the outer wall. 13 C and Cu coated graphite probes were also used in order to test and compare W low and medium Z alternatives. The erosion results from the probes are compared with the calculated erosion [W. Eckstein, C. Garcia-Rosales, J. Roth, W. Ottenberger IPP Report, IPP 9/82]; [H. Verbeek, J. Stober, D. Coster, W. Eckstein, R. Schneider Nucl. Fus. 38 (1998) 12] and a figure of merit (F. of M.) between several materials is proposed which also takes into account the plasma isotope effect in CX erosion.