Estimation of different calculation models for evaluating heavy ion-induced damage in plasma facing materials

•Nuclear energy loss and electronic energy loss dominated at different incident energies.•The atomic number and energy of incident particle showed opposite trend.•VAC model and the NRT model were similar in K-P mode.•VAC, NRT and arc-dpa models showed significant difference in F-C mode.•Consistency between arc-dpa model and MD simulations was high. In a fusion reactor, plasma-facing materials are bombarded by various energetic particles (such as neutrons) from fusion reactions, leading to inevitable irradiation damages. These damages can significantly affect the material servicing life time and threaten the safety of fusion reactors. Accurate and consistent evaluation of irradiation damage is quite important to investigate the evolution mechanism of irradiation defect. In this study, the irradiation damage of tungsten caused by high-energy particles were evaluated using the SRIM code and molecular dynamics simulations. The accuracy of three atomic displacements calculation models, i.e., VAC model, NRT model, and arc-dpa model, under two computational modes of SRIM (the K-P mode and F-C mode) were discussed. It was found that with the increase of the incident particle atomic number, the peak depth of displacement moved to the shallow layer and increased in peak height, while the trend was opposite with the increase of the incident particle energy. As to the different calculation modes, the F-C and K-P modes produced a ratio of vacancies of about 1.8 times in the VAC model. What's more, the VAC model and NRT model predicted results consistent with molecular dynamics simulation results at lower energy ranges (approximately