Metallurgical and Mechanical Joining of Steel and SiC/SiC Composite for Fusion System

ITER project is progressing and the structural material of the blanket will be conventional stainless steels. In the future, the SiC/SiC composites will be employed as the important part of the reactor. Main construction of the reactor will be keep stainless steels such as SUS316L and RAFM steels, the interface technology of SiC and steels will be essential. There are many situation of to connect the SiC component and steel structures, the development of technology for the connecting is not enough. Mismatch of coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) prevent the simple diffusion bonding of plates, normally insert materials are used to absorb the mismatch of the CTE. There is a possibility to use the CTE mismatch for the connecting, and in present research, some fundamental researches of potential techniques to connect SiC/SiC composites and steels using the metallurgical method have been developed and investigated.