Thermal cycling behaviour of TiBe₁₂ under fusion blanket relevant conditions

Titanium beryllide (TiBe12) is a candidate neutron multiplier material for breeding blanket concepts in fusion reactors. In this study, thermal cycling experiments were performed on TiBe12 blocks using induction heating and water cooling to investigate the response to transient thermal loading. Thermal cycling of a one-piece hexagonal TiBe12 block resulted in fracture during the first heating cycle, attributed to non-uniform induction heating associated with the closed-loop block geometry. In contrast, a block subdivided into 12 TiBe12 segments withstood 205 heating and cooling cycles between approximately 360 and 920°C without macroscopic cracking or fracture.
Additional experiments showed that TiBe12 segments tolerate heating rates up to 1.1–1.3 K/s and cooling rates of about 1.2 K/s without failure. The results demonstrate that block segmentation significantly improves thermal cycling stability and provide experimental data for validation of thermo-mechanical models of beryllide blanket components under reactor-relevant transient conditions.